That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day

"Why"--she demanded, raising her fine eyes to the genuine Adam ceiling--"why can't my husband get a post in the Berlin Diplomatic, instead of stupid old Petersburg? One never _dreamed_ Germans could be so interesting before!" "We are interesting, yes!" blandly agreed von Herrnung. He lighted a fresh cigarette, balanced his magnificent person upon an inlaid Oriental chess-stool, folded his huge arms upon his broad breast, and turned upon Trixie and the impressionable Cynthia the batteries of his superb blue eyes. "_Es mag wohl sein_--it may possibly be because the Englishman is a human machine--a cold and formal, if intelligent being; while the German is a child of Nature, whatever his calling may be. His bounding pulses throb under the official or military uniform as though it were a fawn-skin worn by a young satyr. He can sing. He can revel. He can enjoy. He can love----" "He can love! Now you're getting really quite too interesting!" Mrs. Charterhouse exclaimed in seeming ecstasy: "Do go on, Count. Pray, pray tell us how German officers love!" "Yet this exuberance, and seeming-careless child-likeness," pursued von Herrnung, "co-exists in the representative male of our glorious German nation with an energy which is pitilessly indomitable, and a hardness like that of diamond, or of the metal of the Hammer of Thor. Scratch the child, joyous and voluptuous"--the ladies nodded to each other delightedly at this second reference to voluptuousness--"you will find beneath its rosy skin the German Superman. _Gnaedige Graefin_, may I give you a cigarette?" He pulled out a massive silver-gilt case, and offered it to Lady Wastwood, who had thrown away the end of a tiny Pera. "Thanks," said the lady, "but it might turn out a super-cigarette and disagree with me. How astonishingly well-informed you Germans are upon the subject of yourselves! I've met heaps of your countrymen whom the subject seemed perfectly to obsess. I suppose they begin to teach you at a very early age, don't they? Don't you suppose they would, Cynthia dear?" Mrs. Charterhouse agreed. "Of course. But I wonder if that sort of--might one call it--intensive culture?--can be good for you?" With her charming head on one side she regarded von Herrnung pensively. "Don't you _sometimes_ get fed up with yourselves? One would somehow suppose you would! Like the East End Board School children whose mother had to write to the Fifth Standard teacher to ask her not to tell Hemma and 'Arriet any more nasty things about their insides." Courtley and Lady Beauvayse, who under cover of a separate conversation had been listening, were seized with simultaneous attacks of coughing, rose and escaped from the smoking-room. Patrine Saxham remained, seeming to study the newspaper she had picked up. But only a confused jumble of letters, big and little, danced up and down the columns she held before her eyes. And yet there were lines scattered here and there throughout the newspapers, that boded ill for the peace of the world. How little we dreamed of what was coming while crowded London audiences applauded Jimmy Greggson in the "Dance of the Varalette." The River was ablaze with multi-coloured sweaters, vast crowds planked their gate-money to witness cricket-matches, lawn-tennis and polo-matches, Flying contests, and bouts between International champions at the ancient game of fisticuffs. Even while the handsome young French heavy-weight Carpentier was whacking the Yankee Smith at Olympia, white-faced, weary-eyed men of great affairs were spending the hot hours of the July days and nights--_minus_ a stray half-hour for a meal and a snatched eyeful of sleep now and then--in reading reports in cipher sent by lesser men, agents of the Secret Intelligence Department--who were registered as numbers and owned no names. These told of vast preparations long complete, and terrible designs perfect and perfecting. Poison-fruit, grown and matured in shade, now bursting-ripe and ready to kill. The aerials thrilled, the long waves travelled through invisible ether, carrying the despatches for the weary-eyed men. The despatches were not all in cipher. Thus little polyglot employes, youthful radiotelegraphic operators in charge of ship-stations in Territorial or foreign waters, or Wireless posts quite recently established on foreign frontiers, found themselves sharers in the secret councils of Ambassadors, Emperors, Kings, and Presidents. In their ear-pieces such words as "situation," "utmost gravity," "friction avoided," "Triple Alliance," and "Triple Entente," were repeated over and over. To them the tuned spark sang what the Tsar was saying to his Cousin of Great Britain and the Dominions overseas. They heard the British Foreign Secretary talking from Downing Street to the British Ambassador at Berlin, and the British Ambassador at Paris, and the French President, on a visit to Tsarskoe Selo, replying to _communiques_ from the Quai d'Orsay. Also de Munsen from the Embassy at Vienna, confirming Whitehall views as to the extreme gravity of the Austro-Servian situation. Last, but not least, the voice from a certain guarded sanctum in the Kaiserlicher Palais on the Schloss Platz, Berlin, saying in a cipher of grouped numbers, the secret language of Hohenzollern intrigue not understood of little operators--things that bleached the face of the listener in London to the yellow of old cheese. "As Vicegerent of the World, charged by Almighty God with the supreme duty of maintaining peace among nations ... warn these silly devils of the danger in which they stand! Just for the word 'neutrality'--a word in War-time often disregarded--they risk annihilation of a dynasty by my conquering sword, and the inevitable blotting-out of the British race. Invasion Belgium indispensable.... Must strike the blow before Russia could get to the frontier. Life and death as regards the Success of my Plan. Delay by diplomacy. Promise anything for neutrality. Obtain an understanding of non-intervention. Bluff for all you are worth!" Again in yet more groups of numbers, the vocal spark sang on and on: "Attention. If the Secret Service agent who has managed to get into Lord Clanronald's service as under-librarian at Gwyll Castle can secure complete copies--or better still, the originals--of the old Lord's plans for construction of the secret War-machine that hypocritical England has kept up her sleeve out of so-called humanity since the days of the British Regency--strike a deal with him at once. To the _menu_ that will presently be served to our enemies--beginning with Super-Explosive--explosive bullets, incendiary shells, lachrymatory shells serving as _entrees_--the bombardment of Dover from Calais--the destruction of London and the chief Naval Ports of Great Britain by our Zeppelin Fleet being the _piece de resistance_ of the banquet--the Clanronald Death-engine will be added as fifth course! Thou wilt pay the rogue who has dared to stickle for higher terms ten thousand pounds in English banknotes on account of the sum of twelve million marks he presumptuously demands of us. The balance will be paid him on personal application at the Wilhelmstrasse--you understand! Warn Prince Henry and von Moltke not to risk bringing the Secret Plans personally. Should the loss of the documents be discovered, suspicion would instantly attach to one of these two. Trust not the thief; he may be tempted to betray us. Send the plans by Undersea Boat 18 now on coast-observation duty in Area 88--fathoms 50--44, east of Spurn Head. Annulled. Forward by air. Squadron-Captain-Pilot von Herrnung of my 10th Field Flight will be detailed for this duty, being now in London investigating the value of a new stabiliser--rejected by the English War Office--which the French Chiefs of the Service Ae are anxious to secure. Tell him to obtain a personal flying-test from the inventor. I say no further! As the Hohenzollern were noble robber-knights, so also were von Herrnung's ancestors. Let the eagle fly home to his Imperial master with booty from across the sea. England may suppose him drowned. France also.... We shall know better.... A hearty welcome awaits the proud bird-knight alighting on our German soil." *CHAPTER XXIV* *DISILLUSION* Rhona Helvellyn came stalking in, looked round, recognised Patrine, came over and dropped down beside her on the divan, full to the brim of the invariable subject, and suffering to talk. Through the good offices of a legal pal she had got in to hear the Suffragette Trial at the Old Bailey that day. Fan Braid and Kitty Neek had been frightfully plucky. Full of grit and vim, in spite of the six weeks' hunger-strike. Began shrieking like Jimmy O! the moment they were brought into the dock by the warders and wardresses. On being rebuked by the Judge, Fan had bunked a bundle of pamphlets at the head of his lordship, catching the Clerk of the Court, who was seated immediately underneath the Bench, no end of a biff in the eye. "And then?" Patrine heard a strange voice from her own stiff lips asking the question. "Then both of 'em were removed from the Dock. It was done--in time!" Rhona's light eyes danced with enjoyment. "Such a scrimmage! Such a rumpus! Took three men and a woman to tackle each of 'em. We could hear 'em giving tongue all the way down to the cells. Then they had to go on with the Trial without 'em." She chuckled. "You may guess there were a lot of us at the back of the Court waiting--just for that! Perfect wadge all together. Hell and trimmings when we started. They had to eject us before they could jog on with their gay old summing-up!" "But in the end they got through?" The weary voice was so unlike Patrine's that she wondered why Rhona did not jump and stare at her. But Rhona was mounted on her hobby-horse, and unobservant of other things. "Through right enough! And Fan and Kitty--" Rhona screwed up her lips into the shape of a whistle, and winked away a tear that hung on one of her fair eyelashes; "It's too brutal! Three months each, and poor little Kitty dying of lung-trouble. They only brought her back from Davos in May. That riles me!" She clenched her hands fiercely and went on, cautiously lowering her tone: "So far I've taken no active share in any Militant Demonstration. Partly because I'd be wiped off the Club books if I got spouting in public, or was mixed up in any police-court business, partly because I'm funky--there's the word! But at last I'm wound up! It was Kitty's little peaky-white face did it! ... She--she broke a blood-vessel as the warders were carrying her down to the cells." A sob choked Rhona's voice, and a spasm of misery wrenched her. She controlled herself. She was deadly in earnest--wound up to go, as she had said. She went on, talking rapidly, in a tone that only reached the ear it had been meant for. How many such secret disclosures the Club divan had known. "I've thought.... A regular swarm of Distinguished French and Belgian Big Pots and Little Pots--Mayors--Prefects and Deputies, Judges, Press Representatives and Inspectors-General--are engaged in Discovering England this week as ever is. It's an echo of the Entente Cordiale. Behind the badge of the International Advancement Association--I've got one!--I might drop in at one of their farewell speechifications, I believe the next's on Friday at Leamington--and heckle 'em like one o'clock! Ask 'em why women don't have the Vote in France and Belgium----" "Don't they?" "Nix a bit! Not for all the fuss they make about the sex. Or--to fix the scene of my maiden effort nearer home--there's a Banquet of