That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
pre-eminent in the hideous display. Now the woman sank towards the
ground, with supple limbs outstretched and her wild head thrown back in
fierce surrender. Her white fangs gleamed, her dumb mouth seemed to
roar. And as her conqueror crept stealthily towards her, the play of
his great muscles could be seen beneath his civilised attire, as though
his supple body had been clothed with the tawny-golden, black-dappled
hide of the Brazilian jaguar.
As Herculano crouched and sprang, La Rivadavia's muscles visibly
tightened. She bounded high, turned in the act.... Their gleaming
fangs clashed in mid-air. And from the massed spectators came a hiss of
excitement, "_Th-h-h!_ ..." like the hissing of a thousand snakes.
"Great Scott!" Patrine heard herself saying. "_Great--Scott!_"
She no longer heard von Herrnung harshly breathing behind her.... He
had moved to the leftward. His tall, broad-shouldered figure now stood
against the railing some dozen feet away. His well-cut face, seen in
profile, was purplish-red to the crisp, scarlet waves topping his high
square forehead. The big white hands that held the glasses glued to his
eyes, jerked, and as he pressed against the railing Patrine knew that he
was shuddering. Now he looked at her, and his ravaged face was
terrifying to the girl.
"Will you not..." he began, thickly.
She quivered, cast a look about; saw the ugly emotion under which he
laboured reflected in every face within her range of vision, as round
after round of plaudits rose to the roof of the pavilion, escaping
through the wide-open spaces between its gilded, rose-twined pillars
into the night. The rafters vibrated with demands for a repetition of
the popular sensation. The dancers accepted the encore.
If von Herrnung beckoned now, asking Patrine to go down with him amongst
the acrid exhalations of that cockpit of variegated lights, thronged
with excited men and strangely-bedizened women, rent by devastating
emotions, drunk with strange excitements, would Patrine say Yes or No?
...
_Ouf!_ but it was hot. How thick the air was with those illusion
perfumes. And from whence was that cool breeze blowing that suddenly
freshened the heavy air? ...
*CHAPTER XVI*
*THE WIND OF JOY*
Patrine drew back from the edge of the promenade. A stout, swarthy
Frenchman, a Southerner evidently, whose full brown face streamed with
little rills of perspiration, stepped nimbly into her vacated place.
His female companion instantly took his. The same movement was
repeated--the packed bodies seemed to melt before her. In a few more
steps she had merged from the crowd, upon the outer edge of the elevated
promenade.
There was another velvet railing there, and steps leading down to the
promenade upon the ground-level. Against the background of starlit sky
and illuminated gardens stood the tall figure of a man. He was
broad-shouldered and lightly built, the poise and balance of his figure
admirable. But for the gleam of his living eyes in his tanned face, and
the movements of his head as he turned it from side to side, evidently
seeking somebody, he might have been a statue of Mercury cast in
light-hued bronze.
For he wore loose, waist-high leggings strapped at the ankles, and a
belted gabardine of thin light brown material, while a cap with an
upturned brim and ear-flaps dangled from his sunburnt hand. And a
uniformed official, all lacquered moustaches and gold-laced blue cloth,
stood gesticulating a few paces from him, keen on defending from so
unceremonious an intruder the integrity of the Upper Promenade.
"Monsieur cannot possibly descend into the ball-room ... the costume of
Monsieur is not appropriate. It offends against good taste. It
outrages the proprieties.... It is _peu convenable_ even that Monsieur
should be here."
Patrine heard the protest, saw it driven home by swift expressive Gallic
gestures, caught a gleam of mirth in the eyes of the oddly-garbed
intruder, and the quirk of a smile at the corners of his mouth. No
doubt the suggestion of the proprieties in connection with the
traditions of Mabille had evoked it. She liked his face; it was lean
and hard and rather hatchety, with a brave outlook of clear light eyes
under the marked eyebrows, thick and straight and silvery-fair against
his sunburnt skin. To her woman's eyes, Fatigue was stamped upon it and
anxiety, and a kind of rueful impatience, as he apologised for the
necessity of the intrusion in fragmentary but excellently accentuated
French. He came in search of a friend, who was here and must be found;
it was imperative...
"There is to-morrow!--there is always to-morrow!" the official stated
with a wave.
"That's just the point.... To-morrow! ..." The stranger's forehead was
ploughed with lines of anxiety. He spoke in English now--the well-bred,
modern, clipped English of the public school and the University. "No!
you don't understand"--for the official had vigorously disclaimed all
knowledge of the strange, barbarous tongue in which the other addressed
him. "And I don't believe I'd ever make you. If I could only hammer
into you what sort of a hat I'm in!"
He knitted his brows; pulled himself together for a crowning effort.
Patrine spoke, not as a stranger yielding to a sudden, helpful impulse,
but quite simply, with a little, joyful catching of her breath:
"Could I explain for you, do you suppose?"
"A--thanks! You're awfully good!"
He turned to her eagerly, if with a certain embarrassment.
"If you would.... There is a man here I have to get word to. And--what
French I have is simply technical.... You hardly find it in modern
dictionaries--the argot of the engine-shop and the Flying School."
"Now I understand...." She smiled in his perplexed face, drinking in
deep breaths of the fresh fragrant air that blew about them as they
stood together behind the thick wall of bodies that hid the cockpit from
their view. A deep dimple von Herrnung had never seen showed low down
in one of her pale cheeks. Their whiteness was slightly tinged with
delicate pale rose. And her eyes had lost their brilliant enamelled
hardness. They shone like dusky stars as she went on: "Now I know why I
thought of wide green spaces and a breeze blowing to me over gorse and
heather as I looked at you. Sub-conscious memories of Hendon and
Brooklands and Upavon. For you're a Flying Man!"
"Just that!" His ruefulness was banished. "And now you know how I come
to be in Paris with the clothes I stand up in and not another rag....
Two of us flew the Channel yesterday morning.... If the weather holds
decent, we should be on the wing again by four A.M. And my mechanic's
given me the slip. To say he's taken French leave would be appropriate
under the circumstances. Left a line--the cool--beggar!--to say I'd
find him here."
"Too bad!" she said, as fresh furrows dug themselves into the tanned
forehead. "Not fair to leave you in the cart like that. No wonder you
followed--hot upon his track."
"Combed the whole place--everywhere they'll let me in. But my aviator's
kit's against me. I've seen some rummy get-ups. But they draw the line
at Carberry's overalls."
One hand rested easily on his hip, in the other hand he swung the eared
cap with goggles. A pedestal in the moonlight would have suited him.
It occurred to her to ask:
"What was he like--your runaway mechanic?"
"I hardly ... Oh! ... Little black-avised Welshman--barely tips the
scale at eight stone. Has to be a light-weight, because I weigh all of
eleven. And with the hovering-gear--but that can't interest you."
"Indeed it does. What of the hovering-gear?"
His face darkened and hardened. He said:
"It's an invention of mine. And after no end trying--our own people at
Whitehall simply wouldn't have anything to do with me--the chiefs of the
French Service Aeronautique consented to give it a test."
"Sporting of them, wasn't it?"
He agreed:
"No end sporting. So I bucked the tiger over the Channel with Davis--to
find that an officer and mechanic of the S. A. were told off to try the
hoverer over the selected area. For us to engineer the thing ourselves
wasn't '_l'etiquette militaire_.' That's the French for Government
red-tape."
"Bother etiquette! I'm beginning to sympathise with Davis!"
His vexation broke up in laughter.
"That's what _she_ did. She sympathised with Davis and carried him off
here."
Patrine said, a light breaking in on her:
"Why, of course, there would be a girl.... He'd hardly come to a place
like this alone, would he?"
Some query in his look made her add hastily:
"What was she like?"
"Like.... The girl who's carried off Davis? ..." He reflected a
moment. "Pretty and plump and fluffy, with a pair of goo-goo eyes!
She's daughter or niece or something"--he boggled the explanation
rather--"to the German chap who hired us the hangar at Drancy--if you
can give that name to a ramshackle shed in a waste building-lot! And
Davis--thundering good man, but once on a spree..." He whistled
dismally. "If I could only get my claws on him! ..."
Here the uniformed official returned to the charge:
"Monsieur has found his friend--Monsieur has explained the situation.
To enter the _Salon de Danse_ with Madame is not permissible--in the
costume Monsieur displays. No doubt Madame will understand!"
Patrine said, with a slight catch in her breath, as though some drops of
chilly pleasant perfume had been suddenly sprayed on her:
"He supposes ... he thinks ... that I'm ... your friend!"
"I'll explain." He reddened, turning to the official, saying in the
French of the British schoolboy, laborious, devoid of colloquialisms:
"_Monsieur, vous n'avez pas compris. Madame elle--elle n'etes qu'une
etrangere. Pour mon ami, je ne lui vois. Si vous permettre d'entrer,
peut-etre----_"
"_Rototo! Voyez, man blousier, j'connais bien la sorte! Sufficit!
Assez! Ca m' fait suer, comprends?_" The gold-braided arm described a
magnificent sweep, the large white kid-covered hand indicated remote
distance--"_Sortez!_ ..."
The Briton, thus invited to retire, looked at Patrine.
"I can't quite follow, but it's plain he's telling me to hook it. The
rest is--pretty--strong?"
She nodded, biting her lip.
"Frightfully rude. Not that I know much Paris slang. But a friend of
mine--" She broke off to listen, as from under the functionary's waxed
moustache rattled another sentence:
"_A l'instant, ou j'appelle l' sergent d'ville!_"
"He's talking about sending for the police now!" She added hastily:
"Don't let him do that! Offer him a tip!"
The magic word must have been comprehended of the braided functionary.
He ceased to fulminate. He waited, his avid eye upon the pair. The
lean hatchety face of the aviator had flamed at Patrine's suggestion.
He said:
"Don't you think I'd have tipped him in the beginning--if I'd had the
wherewithal? But expenses have been frightful!--the waste lot with the
shed I've stalled the machine in costs as much as a suite of rooms at a
decent middle-class hotel would. Had to fork rent in advance too.
Proprietor's a German as well as a jerry-builder, and when I've paid his
goo-goo girl for our coffee and rolls to-morrow morning"--the speaker
exhibited a disc of shiny metal bearing the classical capped and
oak-wreathed head of the Republic, value exactly
twopence-halfpenny--"I'll have just one of these blessed tin things
left."
"How rotten!" In the gilt metal vanity-bag, Patrine's inseparable
adjunct, lurked, in the company of a mirror, powder-puff, and note-book,
a tiny white silk purse. In the purse nestled two plump British half
sovereigns, the moiety of Patrine's salary for the previous week.