That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
She was in the car before his outstretched hand could touch her. He
followed, letting Courtley precede him because he wished to sit
opposite, and the great Rolls-Royce purred out of the jam beneath the
illuminated glass archway, and in a moment was out of the Place Vendome
and moving with the stream of vehicles down the Avenue of the Champs
Elysees. In the mingling of moonlight and electric light the tawdry
paste jewels of Patrine's preposterous diadem rivalled the costly
splendours of the jewelled fillets adorning Lady Beauvayse's coiffure,
her _panache_ of white osprey flared above her broad, dark brows as
insolently as though they crowned a Nitocris or a Cleopatra. But--and
here was a titillating discovery--the strange face with its broad brows,
wide, generously-curving cheeks, and little rounded chin, did not belong
to a woman of thirty, or even twenty-five. She was much younger than
the German, who plumed himself upon his _flair_ for the accurate dating
of women, had at first credited. It would be amusing--he told himself
again--hellishly amusing, to cultivate this curious hybrid, half hoyden,
half _femme-du-monde_.
Sarajevo--still Sarajevo. You caught echoes of the crime of that
morning in the tongues of twenty nationalities upon the Paris boulevards
that night. People in automobiles and open carriages, people in the
little red and blue flagged taxis, people crowding the auto-buses and
Cook's big open brakes, the army of people on foot, endlessly streaming
east and west along the great splendid thoroughfares, tossed the name of
the Bosnian capital backwards and forwards, as though it had been a
blood-stained ball.
A gay masculine voice called from a knot of chatterers standing near the
wide illuminated archway of electric stars and crowns and flowers under
which streamed a variegated crowd of pleasure-seekers as the big
Rolls-Royce deposited its load:
"_Nom d'un chien_! What a pack of assassins these Serbians! ... And
yet--what if the whole show were got up by Rataplan at Berlin? ... His
bosom friend, you say--the big Franz Ferdinand? _Zut!_ what of that?
... Sometimes one finds inconvenient the continued existence of even a
bosom friend."
*CHAPTER XIV*
*A PARIS DANCE-GARDEN*
By "Rataplan" was meant the Kaiser, Patrine comprehended, as her
companion glanced over his shoulder at the candid speaker, muttering
something that sounded like a German oath. But Lady Beauvayse was
twittering through a filmy screen of verd-blue chiffon, now discreetly
enveloping her lovely Romney head:
"We're going to hunt up Lady Wathe and Sir Thomas. Take care of Miss
Saxham, Count von Herrnung, in case we get separated in the crush....
Don't forget our programme, Pat. A whiff of Cafe Concert ... Colette
Colin is billed to sing some of her old songs and the very newest of the
new ones.... Then we're coming to the Pavilion de la Danse to see the
Sao Paulo sensation.... La Rivadavia and Herculano, and all the rest of
the crowd.... Meet you there.... So long! Mind, you're not to get
lost!"
"In London you often hear La Colette," said von Herrnung, as he paid the
lean-jawed functionary in the gold-laced light-blue uniform--the usual
notice of free entry having vanished from the entrance--and passed with
his companion into the gravelled promenade of the open-air concert-hall.
"But to-night you will hear no songs of old France, no Chansons
Pompadour nor Chansons Crinoline. She comes to this place from her own
theatre to oblige an old comrade. There is Nou-Nou in that box with
some smart women and the Turk who wears our Prussian Order of the Red
Eagle with the Star and Crescent of the Medjidie. He is Youssouf Pasha,
the Sultan's Envoy-Extraordinary. Nou-Nou has brought him to hear La
Colette. Shall we not sit here?"
"Who is Nou-Nou?" Patrine asked, as she settled her tall, luxuriant
person on one of the little green-painted iron chairs.
"Who is Nou-Nou?" her companion echoed. "You saw her to-day at
Longchamps in her black confection. Everybody was looking.... She is
wonderfully _chic_--Nou-Nou! May I be permitted to light a _zigarre_?
..."
"Do! ... But--why is she so much the rage? She isn't even pretty, your
Mademoiselle Nou-Nou." Patrine said it with her bright gaze fastened on
the famous Impropriety who had paraded under the chestnuts of Longchamps
in the sheath of black gauze unlined, save with her own notorious
attractions--both irresistible and fatal, judging by their recorded
effects upon excitable Parisian _viveurs_ and _gommeux_. She saw a
triangular and oddly-crumpled face, rouged high upon the cheek-bones in
circular patches, a pair of almost extinguished eyes, indicated by
streaks of blue pencil, and caught a sentence screamed at the stout Turk
in a voice like a hoarse cockatoo's. Boldly erect upon the skull
adorned by a scanty thatch of lemon-yellow balanced a black feather,
long and attenuated as the wearer. Nou-Nou's stick-like, fleshless arms,
the cadaverous and meagre torso unblushingly revealed by the transparent
casing of her upper person, might have enthralled a keen student of
anatomy. But of feminine charms, in the accepted sense of the word, she
possessed not one, it seemed to Patrine.
"Do not look at her too hard, or she may send round and invite you to
supper," warned the laughing voice of von Herrnung speaking close to her
ear. "She has all the vices--the good Nou-Nou!"
"Including the vice of indiscriminate hospitality," Patrine laughed; but
a little uncontrollable shudder rippled over her as she withdrew her
eyes from the painted, crumpled visage, leering with half-extinguished
eyes from under the canary-coloured wig.
"That is so. Tell me--you and Lady Beauvayse seem great friends--quite
inseparable...." He leaned nearer, his bold eyes closely scrutinising
her face. "How comes it that she leaves you alone in a Paris
dance-garden: with me, whom you have met to-night--for the first time?"
"She knows I can take jolly good care of myself, wherever and with
whomsoever I may happen to be!" Her black brows frowned; it was evident
she resented his criticism. "And--what are you getting at? What's the
matter with poor old Paris? You know--perhaps it sounds odd!--but I've
never been in Paris before.... And I love it! Down to the ground--it
suits me! It's so gay and brightly-coloured and pagan. The public
buildings and parks are dreams; the shops--too entrancing for anything!
And this place, with its jabber and music and stagy illuminations,
trellises where real roses mix up with artificial ones--ornamental beds
of geraniums and calceolarias and thingumbobs bordered with smelly
little oil lamps, gilt band-stands, concerts, and lovely trees in
blossom.... Is it so luridly awful? To me, it's rather sweet! Of
course the dancing--everybody knows the dancing is pretty well the
limit. But one has seen such a lot of Tango in London--the bloom will
be pretty well rubbed off!"
"Yet some lingers. You have still something to learn from Herculano and
La Rivadavia! ..."
"Do I strike you as such a perfect daisy of inexperience?" Something in
his tone stung, for the full white cheeks coloured faintly. "You didn't
talk to me at dinner as though I were one!"
"How could I help that?" he asked, with the roughness that had
previously intrigued her. "Am I to blame that you look like Phryne or
Aspasia when you are only Mademoiselle de Maupin--before she set out
upon her travels? For you have only got as far as Paris with your friend
Lady Beauvayse. Why does she bring you? I am curious to know."
"Because I am her paid secretary and amanuensis." Patrine brought the
words out with a rush; it was clear that she thought the candour a
necessity, but hated it. "She can't get on without one, and her
husband, Lord Beauvayse--awful little bounder!--won't stand her having a
man. Don't great ladies have secretaries in Germany? Can't you see me
doing Lady Beau's correspondence in my fearful fist--enclosing cheques
to people who solicit donations for charities with a committee and Hon.
Treasurer--tearing up the begging letters full of howlers in the
spelling-line--smelling of bad tobacco and beer or gin? Then I have to
keep her posted in her engagements, go to shows, and functions, and
kettledrums with her when she hasn't a pal handy--that's where my share
of the fun comes in. Just as I'm visiting Paris, as I dare say I shall
visit other centres of lively iniquity--in the character of the
sheep-dog that doesn't bow-wow at the wrong man!"
"You should bow-wow at me." His teeth were hidden, but his eyes were
crinkled up with soundless laughter. "For I am a very wrong--a very
wicked man!"
"How sad!" Her brows were still frowning, but her wide red mouth was
beginning to curl up at the corners. "Couldn't you reform? Is it too
late?"
"I hope so!" he answered her. "For if I were good I should possess no
attraction for a woman of your type. And to charm you I would give my
soul--if I had a soul!"
"Great Scott! You're candid.... Modest too.... And complimentary!"
"I am candid, because I cannot help myself."
Three comedians had come upon the stage. She told him not to talk to
her. She wanted to see the turn; she liked music-hall stuff. He
obeyed, mentally congratulating himself on having ascertained her social
status, something better than a typist, hardly on the same level with
his sister Gusta's _dame de compagnie_.
While his bold eyes read the book of her provoking beauty, the
performance on the stage, backed by the deep green palmate foliage and
white or ruddy candelabra-like blossom-sprays of the chestnuts, framed
by a broad band of electric lamp-flowers, was culminating to its final
gag. A preposterously fat man attired in the historic low-crowned hat,
Union Jack waistcoat, brass-buttoned blue tail-coat, leathers and
hunting-tops of the traditional John Bull, another comedian in the
legendary costume of M. Jacques Prud'homme, and a truculent-looking
personage whose Teutonic French accent, spiked silver helmet with the
Prussian eagle, First Imperial Guards cuirass and tunic, breeches and
spurred jack-boots, in combination with a well-known moustache with
upright ends, a huge Iron Cross, and a great many other property
decorations, left no doubt as to the political bent of the scrap of
pantomime.
It was an ordinary bit of comic knockabout, to which the tragic
circumstances of the day lent a peculiar tang. One has seen it before,
played by the three comedians, in the green-baize aprons, brown duffel
knee-breeches, and shirt-sleeves sported by the waiters of low-class
Paris or Munich brasseries.
In the centre of the stage, instead of a bright-hooped beer-barrel on a
wooden cellar-stand, was a revolving globe representing the World. And
each of the three comedians, being armed with a tumbler, a spile-awl,
and a spigot-tap, proceeded, with appropriate patter, gesture, and
grimaces, to insert his spigot, draw, and drink. John Bull turned the
globe to the United Kingdom, and tapped the big black patch in East
Middlesex. Creamy-headed London porter filled his glass. He held it
up, nodded a "Here's to you!" and toped off. M. Prud'homme punctured
France in the rich vine-growing district of Epernay. Champagne crowned
the goblet, and he drank in dumb show to Gallia, the land of love,
laughter, and wine. It was then the turn of the Teuton. He bored, and
Brandenburg yielded a tall bock of foaming blonde lager. He sucked it
down with guttural _Achs_ of delight.
But this was not all. John Bull exploited the East Indies. A stream of
rubies and emeralds filled his glass. He bored deep in the Union of
South Africa--diamonds and gold-dust heaped the vessel. Fired by his