The crossing—in this Arctic April weather when all of Britain and Belgium and North-West France lay under snowdrifts—had been calm and smooth enough for the worst sea-stomachs on the steamer. The tall young woman in the Navy blue felt hat with the well-known V.A.D. ribbon, and the long blue serge coat with the Red Cross shield-badge on the left breast, seemed used to travelling alone in War-time. She had secured a dry chair, set in the shelter of the after-deck-saloon, and a lifebelt as stipulated by the authorities, and tucked herself in her travelling-rug with her suit-case under her feet before the lights went out. Thus she had remained throughout the passage, with her dark eyes looking seawards, as deaf to occasional bursts of uproarious song from a draft of returning Blighties packed on the lower-deck, as to the siren's raucous shrieks.
Courteous fellow-passengers, chiefly British and Belgian officers returning from leave, would have been ready enough to have chatted with the young woman who was going to the Front. Such attentions as they offered her she accepted frankly. One got her tea and sandwiches, another offered chocolate, another a foot-warmer. Yet another insisted on lending her an unnecessary extra rug. They pointed out the hovering Fleet hydroplanes, and the diligently-scouting searchlights of the destroyers guarding the sea-way, and the Hull-bound Dutch liner whose neutrality was proclaimed in illuminated side-letters, blazing like a sea-Alhambra upon the east horizon, and the Hospital ship that passed close, coming from Boulogne laden with wounded, the huge Red Cross upon her flank picked out with blazing green lights.
One and all united in assuring the wearer of the V.A.D. uniform that there was no danger. Though when the red and green eyes on the ends of the East and West jetties winked into sight over the coal-black shining water, her fellow-passengers congratulated Patrine as heartily as though some peril had been escaped.
"Nothing more doing, Pinkums, old thing!" said an experienced youngster of twenty to a susceptible senior whom Patrine's unprotected condition had roused to a strong sense of responsibility. "She's got enough passes from British and French Headquarters to make a poker-hand. I saw her showin' 'em to the authorities at Folkestone. Besides, have heart, there's a Red Tab here to meet her. We'd better hence it before we're snubbed."
And they saluted, and clattered down the crowded gangway, grabbing their valises and buttoning up their British warms, and hurried away to get into trench-kit, webbings, and waders, and swell the crowd in the railway-station—waiting to go up to the Front and carry on with the hourly, momentary game of touch-and-go with Death.
While Patrine looked eagerly about her, listening to the hum of the vast human beehive. This was not the big rambling, old-fashioned French seaport one had known so well before the War. Under sky-blind arc-lights and red, green, and white lamps, every form of activity imaginable in connection with the running of that now huge and complicated machine, the British Field Army, seemed even at this hour to be in full swing. The rumble of steam-cranes and the roar of dynamos, the panting of pneumatic hold-dischargers, the clank of couplings, and the shrieks of locomotives mingled with the tinny voices of gramophones from the recreation-rooms at the great packed barracks and crowded camps, and the sounds of song and laughter and applause from music-halls and picture-palaces.
"Yes, it goes on most of the time," said the Red Tab who had come to meet Patrine, an officer upon the Staff of the Commandant of a Headquarters not far from—a certain place where Miss Saxham wished to go. "The Army's got to be rationed and equipped and horsed and foraged, and timbered and coaled and petroled and munitioned, as well as cobbled and engineered and patched and tinkered and nursed—don't you follow me? And these Base Ports are jolly useful. Nobody goes to bed much, I fancy. Perhaps they'll make up the sleep they've lost by-and-by, after the War."
"What-ho, Nubbins! Back from the Old Shop? Sorry!—didn't happen to see you weren't alone!"
The station had vomited a flood of khaki, tumbling down the half-lit quays to take later boats by storm. A tall, lanky officer of Gunners had hailed Red Tab effusively; then, seeing him to be engaged with a lady, hurried on with apologies and a salute for Patrine.
"Don't mind me! Do call back your friend," she urged. "He seemed so glad to see you."
"Thanks much. If you don't mind. Whewip! Whewip!"
And the other, recalled by a shrill whistle, wheeled and came back upon his stride, to grasp the offered hand. Whereupon, ensued the following strictly private duologue:
"How goes the Battery?"
"First class. And your crowd?"
"Crawling along as per, usual. Congrats on the Oudstyde affair!"
"Thanks frightfully! But the whole thing was a bit of a fluke—everyone knows that. They had thrown down a gas-attack and the wind went about-face. So we stayed where we were and shelled them through their chlorine. Then they got their Reserves up and came on in lumps—the old Zulu formation—and Pyers and his Engineers got to work with the"—the speaker's voice dropped to an undertone—"what Pyers calls the 'Piffbozzler.'"
"The rose by any other name——" quoted Red Tab, and went on: "I'd have given a tenner to have been there!—and as for old Clanronald—I wonder if he got leave from—wherever he is—to see the stunt that day?"
Said the Gunner:
"If he did—and had such a thing as a stomach about him, he must have simply—vomited! Pyers says he felt like the Angel with the Flaming Sword—when he didn't feel like an Indian jeweller with a blowpipe—frizzling a column of white ants marching over the floor. You've seen how the things come on and on——"
"Yahgh!" remarked Red Tab expressively.
"But—just for once—we didn't happen to be on the frizzled side. The C. in C. has laughed to the verge of hysterics over a leader in the Berlin Lokal Anzeiger, with reference to the realised dream of the 'homicidal maniac' Clanronald. 'A deplorable example of the perversion of Die Wissenschaft at the murderous hands of English military chemists,' they called it. Pretty neat from Boches who've been pumping burning paraffin into our trenches, and suffocating platoons of men with asphyxiating gases, ever since May."
"And particularly appropriate from people who bribed a crack Professor of Literature to engage as librarian at Gwyll Castle—set the Library Wing on fire and steal the portfolio with the plans of the 'homicidal maniac' three weeks before the War—when Prinz Heinrich and old Moltke were stopping in London. They'd promised their agent twelve million marks if he succeeded. Wonder what he got from them when the plot fizzled out? Well, so-long! Any message for Edith?'
"Tell her you saw me topping, and remember me to your wife!"
And they gripped hands and parted, and Red Tab hurried back to the tall young woman waiting on the flagstones under a blue shaded arc-lamp, saying:
"Good of you not to mind. But a shame to keep you waiting. No—we go out at this gate. I've got a car waiting. More cushy than a crowded railway-carriage—unless you'd have preferred going by train?"
The grey landaulette waiting in the side-street presented no more unusual feature than unusually heavy armoured tyres, and a guard of razor-edged steel bars protecting the front seat.
"In case of barbed wire—strung across country roads," explained Red Tab. "One runs a chance of getting decapitated—travelling fast at night—or in foggy weather—without a jigger of this sort. Let me stick this cushion at your back and tuck the rugs about you. There's a Thermos in the pocket with hot coffee—and sandwiches in a box. Don't restrain your appyloose if you feel at all hungry! The grub was put in specially for you. No: you won't hear the guns yet, except at intervals, and rather faintly. Fact—I've heard 'em in the South of England more distinctly than one does here! But at St. O—, twenty-eight miles from the Front—they're loud enough at times—though there's nothing much doing. Things have been as dull as ditch-water and none of us'll be sorry when the Boches get a move on again. No—thanks, I'm not coming inside! Responsible for your safety. Advise you to tuck up and go to by-by!"
The car settled into its speed when the ups and downs of the old town had been left behind, and the belated activities of the Base Port had died into a distant hum. It slackened pace when the blaze of its headlights showed long black columns of laden motor-lorries upon the wintry roads ahead of it—or horse-drawn transport waggons—or droves of animals, the steam of whose breath and shaggy hides hung over them in a cloud—or bodies of men in heavy marching order—French and British soldiers wearing the new steel headpiece,—shaped after the fashion of Mambrino's helmet, like a basin turned upside down.
And sometimes there were the halts at barriers or patrol-posts near towns or villages, where the light of swung lanterns reddened the moustached faces of gendarmes of Chasseurs. But usually when Patrine cleared a space upon the misty window-glass, the snow-covered landscape would be flying past under the fitful moonlight, with the elongated shadow of the grey Staff car galloping beside it like a demon dog.
Midnight was striking from an ancient church-tower when, passing the guarded barriers of a town of old-world houses, and stopping in a street running from a Place bathed in frosty moonlight, and dominated by a vast cathedral, Red Tab, with icicles on his clipped moustache and fur collar, got down and tapped upon the rimy glass.
"Sorry to wake you up, Miss Saxham!" he said, opening the door as Patrine sat up, straightened the dented brim of her hat and blinked denial of her slumberousness, "but here's the end of your journey. This is the Ursuline Convent of St. O—, where we've arranged for you to billet to-night. The Superioress is a frightfully hospitable old lady, and my uncle—I mean Sir Roland—thought you'd be more cushy with the Sisters than at a common hotel!"
"Sir Roland is always kind. But you, Captain Smyth-Howell?" She looked out at her red-tabbed escort with compunction as he tugged at the chain of a clanging bell, and beat his mittened hands together, stamping upon the pavement to warm his frozen feet.
"Me? Oh, I'm pushing on to Divisional Headquarters—twenty-five miles from this place and five miles north of the Belgian frontier. You'll be sent on to Pophereele in the morning, first thing. The French Chaplain of the Red Cross Hospital there is staying for the night with the Bishop at the Palace here. A tremendously agreeable old bird the Chaplain—and a Monsignore of the Vatican. I've met him—and he said he'd be delighted to look after you. Don't get down—it's frightfully slippery!"
But the tall, womanly figure was already standing beside him on the snowy cobblestones, tilting a round white chin towards the sky, and narrowing long eyes—"queer eyes" he mentally termed them—to see the better through her veil.
"What glorious stars!"
He liked the soft warmth of her voice, as he answered:
"Magnificent, aren't they? Look at Draco blazing away, high over the north transept of the Cathedral. And that would be Aquila—I rather fancy—lowish on the horizon, over that ruined tower. That's a bit of their famous Abbey——"
"Great Scott!"
"Did anything startle you?" he asked. "You said——"
"I know I said it, but I didn't mean to. There, again—" She pointed as forked tongues of pale rainbow-tinted fire leaped up from the northern horizon, throwing into momentary relief the Cathedral's stately bulk and the huddled housetops.
"Those are Boche fireworks!"
"Fireworks?"
"Star-shell, rockets, and so forth. They regularly treat us to a display before they begin to pound us again. Where are we fighting? Oh, pretty busy north—as far as Ypres and as far south as La Bassée. French on our right—French and Belgians on the left of us. More French holding Verdun. My hat! what gorgeous fighters! Men of steel with muscles of vulcanised rubber. And we thought the Gaul an absinthe-drinking degenerate. I tell you we wanted this War to open our eyes for us. Perhaps they did too! Here's one of the Sisters coming now!"
Hurrying felt slippers with rope soles shuffled over stone pavements. The key grated and the bolts shot back. A little Sister Portress in a close guimpe and flowing black veil, with a blue-checked apron tied over her habit, swung back the heavy door, holding her lantern high.
Just Heaven, upon how cold a night Madame had arrived from England! Madame must be perished. But there was coffee, and soup très chaud not only for Madame but for M. l'Officier. And also the chauffeur. Madame la Supérieure would never permit that either should proceed without nourishment. If M. l'Officier and his attendant preferred not to enter, the Sister would wait upon them in the car.
And so Patrine, after taking leave of her red-tabbed escort, was led away to the Mother Superior, a little, bright-eyed, kindly Religious, full of solicitude for Mademoiselle, who, confessing to having emptied a Thermos of hot coffee, and a box of sandwiches during the later stages of the transit, was borne away from the guest's refectory up and down several crooked flights of ancient stairs to a white-washed apartment, containing a prie-dieu and a big plaster Crucifix, a great walnut bed with faded Directoire curtains, a minute washstand,—a faint smell of scorched wood, emanating from the perforated metal registers of a calorifère, and a bad little coloured print of Lord Roberts, within a stitched border of yellow immortelles and faded laurel-leaves, that had been green and fresh six months before....
Patrine spent a white night in the town where the old brave heart of the great soldier had given its last throb for England. Not because those thudding guns in the north and east kept her wakeful—or because she had never stayed in a convent before.
She was going to Sherbrand—her Flying Man—who had been supposed to be dead and found to be living,—and who had written to say that he did not want Patrine. The letter lay against her heart, and her hands were folded tightly over it, as she lay staring with shining eyes at the drawn curtains flapping in the chill breeze stinging through the open window that had been fastened with a nail when the English guest arrived.