*THAT WHICH HATH
WINGS*
A NOVEL OF THE DAY
BY
RICHARD DEHAN
AUTHOR OF "THE DOP DOCTOR," "BETWEEN TWO THIEVES," ETC.
"_For a bird of the air shall carry the voice,
and that which hath wings shall
tell the matter._"--ECCLESIAS. x., 20.
S. B. GUNDY
TORONTO
COPYRIGHT, 1918
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
THESE LEAVES IN
DEAR REMEMBRANCE
FOR YOUR GRAVE
ACROSS THE SEA.
SIDMOUTH, DEVON,
_January_, 1918.
*CONTENTS*
CHAPTER
I.--PRESENTS TWO YOUNG PEOPLE
II.--DAME NATURE INTERVENES
III.--FAIR ROSAMOND'S CHOICE
IV.--RAYMOND OF THE S. AE. F.
V.--THE BIRD OF WAR
VI.--SHERBRAND
VII.--THE CONSOLATRIX
VIII.--MONSEIGNEUR
IX.--SIR THOMAS ENTERTAINS
X.--A SUPERMAN
XI.--PATRINE SAXHAM
XII.--THE GATHERING OF THE STORM
XIII.--THE SUPERMAN
XIV.--A PARIS DANCE-GARDEN
XV.--THE BITE IN THE KISS
XVI.--THE WIND OF JOY
XVII.--INTRODUCES AN OLD FRIEND
XVIII.--SAXHAM PAYS
XIX.--BAWNE
XX.--THE MODERN HIPPOCRATES
XXI.--MARGOT LOOKS IN
XXII.--MARGOT IS SQUARE
XXIII.--A MODERN CLUB
XXIV.--DISILLUSION
XXV.--THREE MEN IN A CAR
XXVI.--A PAIR OF PALS
XXVII.--SIR ROLAND TELLS A STORY
XXVIII.--THE GOD FROM THE MACHINE
XXIX.--A SECRET MISSION
XXX.--THE REAPING
XXXI.--VON HERRNUNG BAITS THE HOOK
XXXII.--ADVENTURE IN THE AIR
XXXIII.--BAWNE LEARNS THE TRUTH
XXXIV.--THE BROWN SATCHEL
XXXV.--NUMBER EIGHTEEN
XXXVI.--HUE AND CRY
XXXVII.--PATRINE CONFESSES
XXXVIII.--THE REBOUND
XXXIX.--A NIGHT IN JULY
XL.--MACROMBIE IS SACKED
XLI.--SAXHAM LIES
XLII.--SAXHAM BREAKS THE NEWS
XLIII.--THE PLUNDERED NEST
XLIV.--PATRINE REMEMBERS
XLV.--FLOTSAM FROM THE NORTH SEA
XLVI.--AT NORDEICH WIRELESS
XLVII.--THE MAN OF "THE DAY"
XLVIII.--PATRINE IS ENGAGED
XLIX.--THE WAR CLOUD BREAKS
L.--THE EVE OF ARMAGEDDON
LI.--THE INWARD VOICE
LII.--KHAKI
LIII.--FRANKY GOES TO THE FRONT
LIV.--OFFICIAL RETICENCE
LV.--NEWS OF BAWNE
LVI.--LA BRABANCONNE
LVII.--THE BELGIAN WIFE
LVIII.--SHERBRAND BUYS THE LICENCE
LIX.--THE WOE-WAVE BREAKS
LX.--KULTUR!
LXI.--LYNETTE DREAMS
LXII.--WOUNDED FROM THE FRONT
LXIII.--BAWNE FINDS A FRIEND
LXIV.--AT SEASHEERE
LXV.--GOOD-BYE, DEAR LOVE, GOOD-BYE!
LXVI.--MORE KULTUR
LXVII.--THE QUESTION
LXVIII.--THE DEVIL-EGG
LXIX.--A MENACE; AND GOOD NEWS
LXX.--A LOVER'S JOURNEY
LXXI.--LIVING AND DEAD
LXXII.--LOVE THAT HAS WINGS
*That Which Hath Wings*
*CHAPTER I*
*PRESENTS TWO YOUNG PEOPLE*
In January, 1914, Francis Athelstan Sherbrand, Viscount Norwater, only
son of that fine old warrior, General the Right Honourable Roger
Sherbrand, V.C., K.C.B., first Earl of Mitchelborough, married Margot
Mountjohn, otherwise known as "Kittums," and found that she was
wonderfully innocent--for a girl who knew so much.
It was a genuine love-match, Franky being a comparatively poor
Guardsman, with only two thousand a year in addition to his pay as a
Second Lieutenant in the Royal Bearskins Plain, and Margot a mere
Cinderella in comparison with heiresses of the American canned-provision
and cereal kind.
It had seemed to Franky, standing with patent-leathered feet at the
Rubicon dividing bachelorhood from Benedictism, that all his wooing had
been done at Margot's Club. True, he had actually proposed to Margot at
the Royal Naval and Military Tournament of the previous June, and
Margot, hysterical with sheer ecstasy, as the horses gravely played at
push-ball, had pinched his arm and gasped out:
"_Yes_, but don't take my mind off the game just now; these dear beasts
are so _heavenly_! ..."
And theatres, film-picture-shows and variety halls, race-meetings,
receptions, balls and kettledrums, polo and croquet-clubs, had fostered
the courtship of Franky and Margot; but all their love-making had been
carried out to the accompanying hum of conversation and the tinkle of
crystal and silver-plate in the dining-room of the "Ladies' Social,"
where Margot had her favourite table in the glass-screened corner by the
fire-place; or in the circular smoking-room with the Persian divan and
green-glass dome, that Margot had given the Club on her nineteenth
birthday; or in the boudoir belonging to the suite she had decorated for
herself on the condition that no other member got the rooms if Margot
wanted them, which Margot nearly always did....
There was a big, rambling, ancient red-brick Hall, stone-faced in the
Early Jacobean manner, standing with its rare old gardens and
glass-houses, lawns and shrubberies, about it, within sight and sound of
the Channel, amidst pine and beech-woods carpeted with bilberry-bushes,
heathery moors, and coverts neck-high in July with the _Osmunda regalis_
fern. The Hall belonged to Margot, though you never found her there
except for a week or two in September and three days at Christmas-tide.
The first fortnight with the birds was well enough, but those three days
at Christmas marked the limit. Of human endurance Margot meant,
possibly. She never vouchsafed to explain.
She also possessed a house in town, but just as her deceased father's
spinster sister lived at the Hall in Devonshire, so did her dead
mother's brother Derek, with his collection of European moths and
butterflies and other _Lepidoptera_, inhabit the fine old mansion in
Hanover Square. Devonshire at Christmas marked the limit of dulness, but
Hanover Square all the London season through beat the band for sheer
ghastly boredom.... Not that there were any flies on little old
London.... Paris and Ostend were ripping places, and you could put in a
clinking good time at Monte Carlo.... Margot had tried New York and
liked it, except for the place itself, which made you think of
illustrations to weird Dunsany legends in which towering temples climb
up unendingly upon each other into black star-speckled skies. But the
Club and London, with Unlimited Bridge and Tango, constituted Margot's
idea of earthly happiness. She never had dreamed of marrying
anybody--until Franky had arrived on the scene.
Perhaps you can see Franky, with the wholesome tan of the Autumn
Manoeuvres yet upon him. Twenty-seven, well-made and muscular, if with
somewhat sloping shoulders and legs of the type that look better in
Bedford cords and puttees, or leathers and hunting-tops, than in tweed
knickers and woollen stockings, or Court knee-breeches and silks.
Observe his well-shaped feet and slight strong hands with pointed
fingers, like those of his ancestors, painted by Vandyke; his brown
eyes--distinctly good if not glowing with the fire of intellect, his
forehead too steep and narrow; his moustache of the regulation
tooth-brush kind, adorning the upper-lip that will not shut down firmly
over his white, rather prominent, front teeth. Cap the small rounded
skull of him with bright brown hair, brushed and anointed to astonishing
sleekness, dress him in the full uniform of a Second Lieutenant in the
Bearskins Plain, and you have Franky on his wedding-day.
Photographs of the happy couple published in the _Daily Wire_, the
_Weekly Silhouette_, the _Lady's Dictatorial_, and the _Photographic
Smile_, hardly do the bridegroom justice. In that without the busby his
features are fixed in a painful grin, while in the other there are no
features at all. But Margot--Margot in a hobble-skirt of satin and
chiffon, with a tulle turban-veil, starred with orange-flowers in pearls
and diamonds, and a long serpent-tail train of silver brocade, hung from
her shoulders by ropes of pearls, was "almost too swee," to quote
Margot's Club friends. Search had been made, amongst the said friends,
many of whom were married, for a pair of five-year-old pages to carry
the bride's train; but there being, for some reason, a dearth of babies
among Margot's wedded intimates, the idea had to be given up.
The wedding was quite the prettiest function of the season. The eight
bridesmaids walked in moss-green _crepe de Chine_ veiled with
silver-spotted chiffon. On their heads were skull-caps of silver
tissue, each having a thirty-inch-high aigrette supported by a thin
_bandeau_ of gold, set with crystals and olivines, the gift of the
bride.... Their stockings were of white lace openwork, the left knee of
each being clasped by the bridegroom's souvenir, a garter of gold,
crystal, and olivines. Silver slippers with four-inch heels completed
the ravishing effect.
_O Perfect Love!_ was sung before the Bishop's Address, and the ceremony
concluded with _The Voice that Breathed_ and Stainer's _Sevenfold Amen_.
The bridal-party passed down the nave to the strains of the Wedding
Chorus from _Lohengrin_. And there was a reception at the Werkeley
Square house of one of the dearest of Margot's innumerable dearest
friends, and the happy pair left in their beautiful brand-new
Winston-Beeston touring car _en route_ for the old red-brick Hall in
Devonshire. Decidedly the honeymoon might have been termed ideal--and
four subsequent months of married life proved tolerably cloudless--until
Fate sent a stinging hailstorm to strip the roses from the bridal bower.
An unexpected, appalling, inevitable discovery was made in Paris in the
_Grande Semaine_, at the end of the loveliest of June seasons. It
utterly ruined--for two people--the Day of the Grand Prix, that marks
the climax of the Big Week, when the Parisian coaching-world tools its
four-in-hands to Longchamps Racecourse, and the smartest, richest, and
gayest people, mustered from every capital of Europe, parade under the
chestnut-trees that shade the sunny paddock, to display or criticise the
creations of the greatest _couturiers_.
Margot had put on an astonishing gown for the occasion.... You will
recall that the summer dress designs of 1914 _were_ astonishing; the
autumn modes promised to be even more so, according to Babin, Touchet,
and the Brothers Paillot. Skirts--already as short and as narrow as
possible--were to be even narrower; the Alpha and Omega of perfection
would be represented by the Amphora Silhouette. And Margot, revolving
before her cheval-glass in a sheath of jonquil-coloured silk _lisse_,
embroidered with blue-and-green beetle-wings, found--to her horror and
consternation----
Shall one phrase it that Dame Nature, intent upon her essential,
unfashionable business of reproduction, was at variance with Madame
Fashion _re_ the Amphora Silhouette? The slender shape was not yet
spoilt, but long before the autumn came, no art would mask the wealthy
curves of its maternity.
*CHAPTER II*
*DAME NATURE INTERVENES*
"I can't bear it!--I won't bear it!" Margot reiterated. With her tumbled
hair, swollen eyes, pink uptilted nose, and the little mouth and chin
that quivered with each sobbing breath intaken, she looked absurdly
babyish for her twenty years, as she vowed that wild horses shouldn't
drag her to Longchamps, and railed against the injustice of Fate.
"None of my married friends have had such rotten luck!" she asserted.
She stamped upon the velvety carpet and flashed at Franky a glance of