That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
seeing Hell and its dark Powers still unchained, and raging on this
War-torn earth of ours--what would have been the nature of the edifice
reared by these two Imperial craftsmen, had the younger not been removed
by a violent and sudden death?
Did the prospect of unlocking--with one touch on an electric button and
the scrawl of a wet pen--the brazen gates of Death and Terror ever
strike cold to the heart of the rufous Hapsburg Archduke? Madness, we
know, is in the blood of his evil-fated House. But, when the shots from
a Bosnian High School student's revolver pierced Franz Ferdinand's brain
and body, was he sane enough to realise that the crime of the Anarchist
had saved his own name from foul, indelible, and hideous infamy? We
shall know when the trumpet of the Archangel sounds the Last Reveille,
and the grave gives up its dead, and the Sea spews forth its victims,
and the secrets of that deeper abyss, the human heart, are revealed in
the sheer, awful Light that streams from the Throne of God.
*CHAPTER XIII*
*THE SUPERMAN*
People had for some time been rising, passing out through the oxidised
silver-framed glass doors of Spitz's big brilliant dining-room; beyond
these the vestibule was now full to the walls, so that its palms and
tree-ferns rocked amidst the billows of a heaving human sea. Many
guests lingered in conversation, standing in groups near the vacated
tables. The glitter and blaze of jewels, adorning bizarre coiffures,
bare and powdered throats, bosoms, arms, and backs,--the dazzling
display of brilliantly-hued toilettes, made an _ensemble_ marvellously
gay. And now, returning as they had arrived, but unattended by M.
Spitz, came the party of notables from the German Embassy, talking
together in loud, harsh, Teutonic accents. Von Herrnung, erect,
stiffening to the salute as previously, remained in the rigid attitude
until the Ambassador had passed. But this time the official finger
beckoned. He turned, pushed back his chair, and in a stride, joined the
squat, elderly figure. The yellow-white, heavily-featured face with its
stiff brush of white hair above the square brain-box turned to him, the
deeply-pouched, shrewd grey eyes looked past _him_ to the table he had
left. The coarse mouth under the white moustache with the brushed-up
points, uttered a few emphatic words. Then, with a slight nod, the
representative of the All Highest at Berlin passed on. The swing-doors
opened and shut behind him and his following. And von Herrnung rejoined
his party, saying with a queer, excited breathlessness:
"The ladies will pardon.... His Excellency had something to say!"
The ladies were rising, looking for their theatre-wraps. He deftly
lifted the barbaric garment of green velvet and sable-edged ermines from
the back of Miss Saxham's chair, and, opening it, held it to receive her
tall, luxuriant person, mentally commenting:
"With such hips, such a bosom, and such shoulders, the jade must be
twenty-eight or nine." And remembering how boldly she had said to him
that she liked red men, he thought: "Amusement here.... Nothing needed
but time and opportunity--which this Bosnian affair reduces to a
minimum." "_Gnaediges Fraulein_ will you not put on your _mantel_?"
She told him that she was too hot. He insisted, with all the Teuton's
dread of chill:
"But it will be cooler in the vestibule, and cooler still when we are
driving. Do we not go on to a theatre? I think Lady Wathe has told me
so?"
She shrugged her splendid shoulders.
"Nothing so proper. The _Jardin des Milles Plaisirs_, on the Champs
Elysees. We're all dead nuts on seeing the new dance from Sao Paulo.
The thing that has exploded Tango and Maxixe, you know. Look!--the
others are moving. Don't let's lose them! No! I won't take your arm.
Please carry my wrap with your coat."
"I will put my coat on. Then I shall better carry your _mantel_."
An attendant deftly hung von Herrnung's thin black, sleeveless garment
over his broad shoulders, and gave him his white silk wrap and soft
crush felt. He slipped a coin into the man's palm, its small value
being instantly reflected in the features of the receiver, and moved
towards the swing-doors with Patrine. She said, as a slight block
momentarily arrested their progress:
"What are they all jabbering about? Who has been assassinated? What
has happened at this place with the crack jaw name? ..."
"Sarajevo..." came in von Herrnung's guttural accent.
"Sarajevo.... Not that I know where it is," said the deep warm voice,
that was more like a young man's baritone than a young woman's
contralto. And von Herrnung answered, with a renewal of that tingling
thrill:
"Sarajevo is the capital of Bosnia in Eastern Europe. When Austria
annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1909, she made her seat of Government
at Sarajevo. The Slavs grumbled. They wished for union with
Servia--that little nation of pig-breeders! ... They themselves--the
Bosnians--are stupid peasants, _duemmer Teufels!--Schafskopfs_! They
cultivate their land with the wooden ploughs that were used at the date
of the Trojan War.... But this does not interest you at all, I think?"
"How do you know it doesn't interest me?"
"Because dress and jewellery and amusement are the chief things in your
life, _gnaediges Fraeulein_. You are not even interested in _der
Politik_, or in the higher _Kultur_. The social progress of your own
country is nothing to you. You are too----"
"Too frightfully stupid.... Thanks!"
"I did not say too stupid," von Herrnung contradicted. "But if you were
stupid, you are too hellishly handsome for that to matter in the least."
To be called hellishly handsome pleased her. Her eyes gave him a
flashing side-glance. As a surge in the crowd pressed her curving hip
against his tall, muscular body, she took his offered arm with a rough,
brusque grace. They were near the swing-doors when she spoke:
"Tell me about the Sarajevo business.... Who is the official swell the
Trojan ploughmen have hoisted--as Lady Beau would say?"
"I will tell you. It has happened only this morning----"
She felt the man's powerful muscles thrill and become rigid with
suppressed excitement under the hand that rested on his arm.
"Two personages of the highest rank have been horribly assassinated.
The Archduke Franz Ferdinand, _Kronprinz_ of the Imperial House of
Austria, and his wife; you have heard of the _Graefin_ Sophie Chotek,
created Duchess of Hohenberg? Virtually she was
_Erzherzogin_--Archduchess--but the wife of the Archduke by a _mariage
de la main gauche_. A morganatic marriage--such unions have been heard
of in your virtuous England."
They had passed the swing-doors now, and mingled, with the crush in the
vestibule. Patrine said, signalling with a pair of long black suede
gloves and a vanity-bag of gilded metal chain-mail:
"There's Lady Beau. Behind the second column right of the entrance.
And here's Captain Courtley coming to hurry us up!"
Courtley, smiling and unruffled as ever, dodged under the huge roseate
elbow of an immense lady in Oriental kincob tissues. He gave his
message, turned and dived back again. The rich, womanly baritone of Miss
Saxham said, addressing von Herrnung:
"Lady Wathe and Sir Thomas Brayham have gone on in Lady Wathe's
auto-brougham. Lord Norwater has done a bunk. Pretended he had an
appointment; he's been frightfully fed up with all of us this evening.
Lady Beauvayse says her chauffeur is on the string all right, but about
a million cars are ahead of him. Why did your Austrian Archduke and his
wife go to that place in Bosnia if it wasn't healthy for Royalties?
Fancy!--they went to their deaths this Sunday morning! Why does one
always forget it's Sunday in Paris?"
"That English Sunday of yours," exclaimed von Herrnung, "is very good to
forget, I think!"
She gave her deep, soft laugh. He went on rapidly:
"Of the Archduke and the Duchess I tell you, since you have asked me....
They inspected the troops--regiments of the Austrian garrison. Then
they drove in their automobile along the Appel Quay, towards the
Sarajevo Town Hall. They are passing beneath the shade of an avenue of
tamarind and oak trees when a bomb is thrown at them by a man hidden
among the branches.... The Archduke is very prompt--he wards off the
bomb with his arm. He is not then hurt, nor is the Duchess. But his
_Adjutant_--in the car behind them--is wounded in the neck. When they
arrive at the Town Hall the Mayor commences the address of welcome. To
him Franz Ferdinand says angrily: '_Halt den Mund!_ ... Shut up, you
silly fellow! What the big devil is the use of your speeches? I came to
Sarajevo on a visit, and I get bombs thrown at me.... It is too damned
rotten for anything! ..."
"Yes, yes! ... Go on!" She bit her lips, fighting a nervous impulse to
laugh.
"So the Imperial cortege drove away, and a student threw at the Archduke
another bomb. It did not explode, so he shot him with an automatic
revolver, an American Browning. The Duchess tried to cover him with her
body, and the assassin shot her also. The Archduke begged her to live
for their children, but both victims died as they were being taken to
the Governor's house.... They have arrested the assassins, he who tried
to kill, and the fellow who succeeded.... They are both young, and men
of Serb race. They are rebels all--they hate their Austrian rulers.
Sarajevo is swarming with fellows of the same breed...."
"What will the Austrian Government do to them, now they've caught them?"
"To the regicides," von Herrnung returned harshly, "Austria will
do--nothing that very much matters. It is not an important thing to
destroy two trapped rats. But I think there will be an ultimatum from
Vienna to the Servian Government; and if the terms of that are not
complied with, then the Emperor of Austria may give the signal for his
monitors upon the Donau to open fire upon the capital of Belgrade."
Patrine asked negligently, as a new surge of the crowd thrust her tall,
lithe figure away from her companion's, forcing her to tighten her hold
upon his arm:
"'Monitors?' ... I used to think monitors were big schoolboys and
schoolgirls. Senior pupils told off to keep order. I was one myself
once.... Chosen because I was bigger, and noisier, and naughtier than
any other girl in my class...."
"Ha, ha, ha! ... Praechtig! ... That is capital!" She could feel the
laughter shaking his big ribs. "That is just what they are--those
monitors of the Donau. Each is a big girl who keeps order _von anderen
Sorte_. But they have turned-up noses, not Egyptian and beautiful like
yours!"
He added, with the calculated roughness that had previously pleased her:
"You shall now put on your _mantel_. For the car, I see, is open." He
shrugged his broad square shoulders closer into his overcoat and pulled
up the collar about his throat, saying ill-temperedly: "Always does one
find it with the English. It is _laecherlich_--that passion for the
air."
"Lovely, did you say? ..."
Ignorant or careless that he had said "ridiculous," Patrine suffered him
to wrap her mock ermines about her, seeing above the frieze of waiting
figures that filled in the lower part of the picture framed by the
portico, the emerald-green bird-of-Paradise plume of Lady Beauvayse
whisk into the big white Rolls-Royce, past the neat black-haired head of
Courtley, and the peaked cap and pale Cockney profile of Morris, the
chauffeur. She threw back a jest as she passed out:
"I'm glad you think it lovely. It's one of the nicest things about
us--that we're keen on soap and water and can't do without lots of fresh
air."