That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
"If you have a reasonable excuse for coming, I have said that you may
come."
The boy was like him. You saw it as he stood waiting. The vivid
gentian-blue eyes were Saxham's, as were the thick throat and prominent
under-jaw and the square facial outline. But the plume of hair that
swept over the broad forehead was red-brown like Lynette's. The
delicate, irregular profile and a sensitive sweetness about the lips
were gifts from his mother. The directness of his look, and the tinge
of brusqueness in his speech were unconsciously modelled on the
father's, as he said, sacrificing sufficient of manly independence to
come within the curve of the Doctor's strong arm:
"First, I wanted to show you my new badge."
Saxham's left hand squeezed the arm most distant from him, where a
familiar device was displayed upon the sleeve, midway, between the
shoulder and elbow, below the six-inch length of colours distinctive of
this Scout's Patrol.
"Turn round and show it, then!"
"Father, you're larking. That's my General Scout Badge. I've had it
ever since I passed my Second Class tests. Before then, you know, when
I was a Tenderfoot, I'd only the top-part--the _fleur-de-lis_ without
the motto, and you wear that in your left pocket button-hole. But this
is something special, don't you see?"
Saxham eyed the row of little enamelled circles on the sleeve next him
with respectful gravity. The boy went on, trying to control the gleeful
tremor in his voice:
"I've got the Ambulance Badge!--look at the Geneva Cross!--and the
Signaller's Badge--this is it--with the crossed flags--and the
Interpreter's Badge--the one with the two hands holding. But this is
the very latest. Our Scoutmaster gave it to me after parade to-day.
It's the Airman's Badge--" He caught his breath, the secret was coming
in a moment.... He went on: "To get it you must have made a model
aeroplane. Not a flying-stick, any kid of nine can make one--but a
model that will really fly. That's my special reason for coming.
Mother was out--and--and next to her I wanted to tell you!"
"And next after me?"
The boy considered a moment before he looked up to answer:
"Cousin Pat, because she can keep a secret so tightly."
Saxham patted the sturdy square shoulders.
"You are fond of Cousin Patrine, aren't you?"
"Rather!"
"Just tell me why?"
"Because"--the young brows were puckered--"because she's so big and
so--beautiful. And she'd just die for you and Mother.... She comes in
my prayers next after you two."
"And--the Chief Scout?"
"Father, wouldn't it be--a bit cheeky to go and pray for a man like
that?"
A spark of laughter wakened in Saxham's sombre eyes.
"Not quite respectful, you think? Is that it? Why so, when you're
taught to pray for the Holy Father, Mother Church, and the King and
Queen?"
The boy's puckered brows smoothed. The question was settled.
"Of course. I forgot. Then the Chief Scout must come in after Cousin
Patrine. Because a gentleman must always give place to a lady. That's
what Mother says."
"Suppose Cousin Patrine never came to see you any more, what would you
do then?"
Bawne straightened the sturdy body and proclaimed:
"I would go and find her and bring her back!"
"Suppose she did not want to come?"
Bawne said instantly:
"I would tell her Mother was wanting her. For Mother would be, you
know. And Cousin Pat wouldn't keep her waiting. Not much, sir, she
wouldn't!"
"She cares so?"
"Doesn't she! Why, have you forgotten when I was a little shaver and
Mother was so ill?"
Saxham, with a certain tightening of the muscles of the throat, recalled
the wan, red-eyed spectre that had haunted the landing outside the
guarded bedroom where Lynette lay, white and strengthless, while her
husband fought for her with Death.
"Well, well. Go on loving Patrine and praying for her! Now tell me of
your model."
The boy said, controlling his exultation:
"It has to be left at our District Headquarters until to-morrow. You
see--it's rather a special affair. It's not a flying stick, like the
things I used to make when I was a shaver, nor a glider--you see men in
spectacles flying those every day to please the kids on Hampstead Heath
and in Kensington Gardens, but a model of a Bristol monoplane with a
span of thirty inches, and a main-plane-area of a hundred and fifty"--he
caught his breath and with difficulty kept his eager words from tumbling
over one another as he reached the thrilling climax--"and I built up her
fuselage with cardboard and sticking-plaster out of the First Aid case
you gave me to carry in my belt-pouch, and cut the propeller out of a
tin toy engine I've had ever since I was a kid--and made the planes of
big sheets of stiff foolscap strengthened with thin strips of glued
wood, and her spars, sir!--the upright ones are quills, and her stays
and struts I made of copper wire and she's weighted with lead ribbon
like what you wrap about the gut when you're bottom-fishing for tench or
barbel--and her motor-power is eighteen inches of square elastic
twisted--and father"--he broke into a war-dance of ecstasy
unrestrained--"when Roddy Wrynche and me went on a secret expedition to
Primrose Hill to test her--she flew, sir! First go-off--by George!"
"Really flew? ... You are certain?"
"Upon my life, sir, and that's my Honour. Scout's Honour and life are
the same thing. That's what the Oath rubs into us." He squared his
shoulders and lowered his voice as a boy speaking of high matters that
must be dealt with reverently. "I think it's--ripping. I can say it.
Would you like me to?"
Saxham nodded without speaking, because of that choking something
sticking in his throat. That something Lear called "the mother." And,
dammed away behind his eyes, were scalding tears that only men may shed.
As the young voice said:
"On my Honour I promise that I will do my best to be loyal to God and
the King.
"On my Honour I promise that I will do my best to Help other people at
all times.
"On my Honour I promise that I will do my best to obey the Scout Law....
You see"--the boyish arm was on Saxham's shoulder now, the ruddy-fair
cheek pressed against the pale, close-shaven face--"you see, Father,
when a Scout says 'On my Honour' it's just as if he swore on the
Crucifix!"
Saxham said, crushing down the fierce emotion that had almost mastered
him:
"It is--just the same! For the man who breaks a promise will never keep
an oath.... I have a friend of whom I have told you.... I think he
would like to hear about your model aeroplane.... May I tell him, or
would you prefer to tell him yourself?"
Bawne's fair face glowed. He gasped in ecstasy:
"_Father_.... You mean Mr. Sherbrand--your Flying Man who's in the
Hospital?"
"My Flying Man--but he is well again and back at work at Hendon. There
was not much the matter with him; a slight obstruction in one of the
nasal passages that prevented him from breathing with his mouth shut as
he should. Now he has asked me--this afternoon if I am at leisure--to
bring my little son to the aerodrome and see him make a flight."
"And go up in his aeroplane with him? Father, say Yes! Do, please do!"
As the little figure bobbed up and down beside him in joyous excitement,
Saxham answered, not without an inward tug:
"If your mother says 'Yes' I shall not say No! Now off with you, my
son!"
The boy saluted and went. Even his bright obedience wrung his father's
heart. The man looked haggard and old. He hid his careworn face in his
hands for a minute. His lips were still moving when he looked up and
made the Sign so well known to many of us upon his forehead and breast.
Prayer, that most powerful of all therapeutic agents, so often
prescribed by Saxham for his patients, was his own tonic and sedative in
moments of bodily exhaustion and mental overstrain.
He had prayed, he, the sceptic, on that unforgettable night at
Gueldersdorp, when he wrestled with his possessing fiend.... Lynette
had taught him the habit of prayer. And even as she, a friendless,
neglected waif, had learned to look up and see the shining Faces of our
Divine Redeemer and His Virgin Mother through the features of a pure and
tender woman; so her husband, looking in the eyes of Lynette, had found
the gift of Faith lost years before.
"Oh! ... Prayer!" you say--"Faith!" ... and I see you shrug and sneer a
little, you who are intellectual and highly educated, and have ceased to
believe in what you term the Hebraic myth or the Christian legend--since
you learned to point out the weak places in the First Book of Genesis,
and sneer at the discrepancies between the statements of the Gospel
narrators--though you will hear such testimonies sworn to in good faith,
wherever witnesses are examined in a Court of Law.
But no! you tell me, you are not an Agnostic. You credit the existence
of Almighty God, but prayer is the parson's affair. Well, because a man
wears a straight black coat, will you abandon to him so inestimable a
privilege? Is it not a marvellous thing that you or I should lift up
our earth-made, earth-begrimed hands, and that He who set this tiny
planet to spin out its aeons of cycles amidst the innumerable millions
of systems wheeling through His Universe should stoop to hear the words
we utter? Feeble cries, drowned by the orchestras of the winds, and the
chorus of the Spheres revolving in their orbits, or silent utterances
imperceptible to any Ear save His alone.
*CHAPTER XX*
*THE MODERN HIPPOCRATES*
Patients rapidly succeeded one another in the chair that faced the
window. There were confirmed invalids who were really healthy men and
women, and certain others who came in smilingly to talk about the
weather and the newest Russian Opera, who bore upon their faces the
unmistakable stamp of mortal disease. The wife or the husband, the
father or the mother had worried for nothing.... Would the Doctor
prescribe a little tonic to buck them, or the surgeon alleviate a little
trouble of the local kind? Really nothing--but--Death's knock at the
door. And there were cases--open or unacknowledged--of the liquor-habit
and the drug-mania. To these, instead of dropping out bromide of
potassium and throwing in the chloral hydrates with strychnine and the
chloride of the metal that is crushed and assayed out of the quartz reef
near Johannesburg, or pick-axed out of the frozen ground of the
Klondyke, Saxham dealt out that savage tonic Truth, in ladlesful.
The secret dipsomaniac or druggard could not deceive this man's keen
scrutiny, or escape his unerring diagnosis. When, beaten, they admitted
the fact, Saxham said to them as to the others:
"You say you cannot conquer the craving. I myself once thought so.
Your moral power can be restored, even as was mine. In your case the
habit is barely as ingrained as in the case I quote to you. I drank
alcohol to excess for a period of five years."
Some of the sufferers--elderly women and mild-mannered old
gentlemen--were horrified. Others thought such candour brutal--but
attractively so. Yet others responded to the sympathy masked by the
stern, impassive face, and the blunt, brusque manner.
"At any rate the man's no humbug!" such and such an one would stutter.
"And seems to have any amount of Will. Think I shall put myself in his
hands for a bit." Adding with a rueful twinkle: "He knows how the dog
bites, if anyone does!"
He did, and those hands of his were strong, prompt and unfaltering.
Since the grip of human sympathy had fastened on the Dop Doctor of
Gueldersdorp, and drawn him up out of the depths into sunlight and free
air, and set his feet once more on the firm ground, how many of his