That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
de Longchamps with the narrower Route de Madrid. And the towering plume
of her astonishing hat brought down a shower of red rose-petals as she
passed out before him--and Franky, with some of these on his
top-hat-brim and others nestling in the front of his waistcoat, was
irresistibly reminded of their wedding-day.
Unconsciously, Franky and Margot quitted the broader, more frequented
avenue, crowded with people in carriages, people in automobiles, people
on motor-bicycles and bicyclettes, and followed narrower pathways,
stretching between green lawns adorned with shrubberies and clumps of
stately forest trees, and chiefly patronised by sweethearting couples,
nursemaids in charge of children, children in domineering but
affectionate charge of white-haired ladies, while venerable gentlemen
dozed on rustic benches over the columns of _Figaro_ or _Paris Midi_.
When even these figures became rare, it was borne in upon Franky that he
and Margot were not upon a path that led to the Grounds of the Polo
Club. Reluctantly, he admitted himself lost.
"Does it matter? ..." Margot's voice was weary. "If you're absolutely
set on it, we could ask one of those men in cocked hats and waxed
moustaches and red-and-yellow shoulder-cords to give us the straight
tip. But I don't feel the least bit keen about the Polo Club any more
than the Lakes. These alleys are quiet, and the grass is nice and
green. I vote we go on."
"Madame cannot pass this way. It is not open for strangers."
A Republican Guard, a good-looking _sous-officier_, had spoken,
comprehending the tone rather than the English words.
"Why not?" Margot's eyes suddenly brightened. She eagerly sniffed the
air of the forbidden avenue. The corporal, indicating with his
white-gloved hand other Republican Guards posted at equal distances down
the prohibited alley, and at its intersection with another some two
hundred yards distant, brought his eyes back to Margot to answer:
"Madame, for the reason that certain military operations are taking
place here to-day."
"But my husband is an English officer--" Margot was beginning, when
Franky, reddening to his hat-brim, exhorted her to be quiet, and the
Republican Guard, civilly saluting, stepped upon the grass and moved
away.
"All the same, you are an English officer," Margot persisted, "and what
use is the Entente if that doesn't count?"
"Best child, don't be a giddy goose!" Franky implored her. "You don't
suppose the Authorities care a bad tomato for an English Loot--what
they'd cotton to would have to be a British Brass Hat of the very
biggest kind. Look there!--more to your left, little battums!" He
indicated yet other Republican cocked hats strung at equal distances
down the length of a neighbouring alley, precisely outlining the farther
border of the sandwich-shaped halfacre of greensward by which their
particular avenue ran. "And there!" His professional eye had noted a
big, grey-painted military motor-lorry, numbered, and lettered "S. Ae.
F." Behind the driver's seat towered the slender T-shaped steel mast of
a Field wireless, whose spidery aerials, pegged to the turf, were in
charge of men in _kepis_ and blue overalls, while a non-commissioned
officer, wearing the telephone head-band of the operator, leaned on the
elbow-rest of the tripod supporting the apparatus, his finger on the
buzzer-key. Near him his clerk squatted, pencil and pad in readiness,
while at a respectful distance from two oblong patches of white in the
middle of the green plat of turf, several active upright figures in dark
uniforms stood conversing, or walking to and fro.
"_Officiers Aviateurs_, telegraphists and mechanics of the French
_Service Aeronautique_"--you are listening to Franky--"tremendously
well-organised compared with our little footling Flying Corps, tinkered
fourteen months ago out of the old Air Battalion of the R. E. These
chaps are Engineers--goin' by the dark red double stripes on their
overalls and their dark blue _kepis_. Some of their machines'll be out
for practice. Despatch-droppin' or bombs. Here's a man with brass on
his hat, coming our way.... Takes me for a German soger-orficer I
shouldn't wonder!--lots of 'em get their clothes cut in Bond Street.
But though you can hide Allemand legs in English trousers"--Franky was
recovering his customary cheeriness--"and some of 'em do it uncommon
cleverly--you can't deodorise an accent that hails from Berlin."
The officer approaching--a youthful, upright figure walking quickly,
with the short, springy steps of a man much in the saddle--proved to be
grey-haired and grey-moustached. The double-winged badge of his Service
was embroidered in gold upon the right sleeve of his tunic, and upon the
collar, a single wing in this case, ending in a star. He carried
binoculars suspended from his neck by a rolled-leather thong, and a
revolver in a black-leather case was attached to the belt about his
middle. There was thick white dust upon the legs and uppers of his high
polished black boots, which the grass had scoured from the toes and
soles. His bright blue-grey eyes ran over Franky as the slight
soldierly salute was exchanged. He said, speaking in excellent English:
"If Monsieur, the English officer, will obligingly mention his name,
rank, and regiment, it might be possible to allow him to continue his
promenade with Madame, the invention we are testing being the patent of
his countryman, and already familiar to the Authorities at the British
War Office."
Thus coerced, Franky produced his card, Margot dimpled into smiles, the
polite officer saluted again, introduced himself as Raymond,
Capitaine-Commandant pilot of the --th _escadrille_, wheeled and walked
away. But he returned to say, this time directly addressing Margot:
"Should Madame la Vicomtesse desire to witness the test of her
countryman's--apparatus, there can be no objection to her doing so. But
that Madame should keep clear of the vicinity of the"--he pointed to the
two oblong strips of white canvas adorning the middle of the expanse of
green,--"the signal, intended for the guidance of the aviator, is of
absolute necessity, Madame must understand!"
"There won't be any...?" Margot was beginning, nervously.
"_Mais non, Madame_. _Pas d'explosion_," the officer assured her, and
stiffened to attention facing eastwards, and scanning the sky with eyes
that blinked in the dazzling glare of early noon. For the droning whirr
of a plane just then reached them, drowning the sign of the hot south
breeze that rustled in the tops of the acacias and oaks, ilexes and
poplars, that rose about the arena of open ground....
*CHAPTER V*
*THE BIRD OF WAR*
"The _avion_ comes from Drancy." The speaker looked back at Margot as
he focussed his binoculars. "It is not one of our Army machines, but a
British monoplane built by your countryman and fitted with the invention
whose usefulness we are here to test." He continued: "Should the
_officier-pilote_ in charge of the--apparatus--and who for the time
being represents an enemy--succeed in poising"--he hesitated a bare
instant--"for a stipulated number of moments over the target--those two
lengths of white canvas approximating on the grass represent the
target--he scores a bull's-eye."
He blinked a little, and before Franky's mental vision rose the
aggregation of Government buildings near the _Carrefour des Cascades_,
marked "_Magazins et depots_" on Baedeker's maps.
"He scores a bull's eye," resumed the speaker. "He has already paid one
visit of the requisite duration to an address near the Porte
d'Aubervilliers." Franky had a mental vision of the array of big,
bloated gasometers pertaining to the Strasbourg Railway Yards. "He has
made a similar call at a point indicated between the station of the
Batignolles and the station of the Avenue de Clichy"--the well-preserved
teeth of the officer showed under the grey moustache as he smiled, and
Franky had another vision of the huge _Gare aux Marchandises_ tucked in
the angle between the Railway of the Geinture and the Western Railway
lines, as the speaker went on suavely "and the target succeeding this
will be the last. It is situated on the Champ de Manoeuvres at Issy.
The wireless-telegraph operator of my _escadrille_ informs me that two
bull's eyes have already been registered--which for your countryman's
invention presages well."
Franky, with British plumpness, queried:
"And the invention? Some new bomb-dropping device--planned to get rid
of the way the engine always puts on 'em? If the English
inventor-fellow has done that, his goods are worth buying, I should
say!"
Raymond, _Capitaine-Commandant_, answered as the droning song from the
sky grew louder:
"Of certainty, Monsieur, if his invention prove worth buying, my
Government will undoubtedly purchase what has already been unavailingly
offered to yours. It is our custom to examine and test, closely and
exhaustively, new things that are offered. But what would you? We seek
the best for France."
"He isn't flying his aeroplane himself, is he? Or working his own
invention, whatever it may be?"
"But no, Madame! One of our* Officiers-Aviateurs* is acting as pilot, a
skilled mechanic of our Service occupies the observer's place. Despite
the Entente Cordiale--the happy relations prevailing between my country
and England--it would hardly be _convenable_ or discreet to permit even
an Englishman"--the tone of graceful, subtle irony cannot be conveyed by
pen or type--"_even_ an Englishman to fly over Paris, or any other
fortified city of France. But see! In the sky to the north-east--above
that silvery puff of vapour--arrives now the _avion_ built and
christened by your countryman."
Margot asked, narrowing her beautiful eyes as she searched out the
darkish speck upon the hot blue background:
"The plane, you mean. What does he call it?"
Raymond answered without removing his eyes from his binoculars:
"Madame, he calls it 'The Bird of War.'"
The tuff-tuff of a motor-cycle sounded faintly in the distance, as the
resonant vibrating noise of the aeroplane came more triumphantly out of
the hot blue sky. Save for a scintillating white reflection to the
north that might have been the crystal dome of the great big Palm House
in the Jardin d'Acclimatation, and that unavoidable, useful ugliness,
the gilded lantern of the Tour Eiffel, thrusting up into the middle
distance over the delicately-rounded masses of new foliage upon the
right-hand looking east, the glory and shame and magnificence and
squalor of the Queen City of Cities might have lain a hundred leagues
away, so ringed-in by delicate austere brown of serried tree-trunks,
rising above rich clumps of blossoming lilac, syringa, yellow azalea,
and pink, mauve, and snowy rhododendron, was the spacious green arena
wherein Franky and Margot were destined to play their part.
Now, followed by the wide-winged shadow that the sun of high noon threw
almost directly beneath her, darkening drifting cloud, and open city
spaces, passing over breasting tree-tops and wide stretches of municipal
greensward, the Bird of War drew nearer and more near.... And glancing
up as the portentous flying shadow suddenly blotted out the sunlight,
Franky realised that the two-seater monoplane was hovering, and buzzing
as she hovered, like a Brobdingnagian combination of kite-hawk,
dragon-fly, and bumblebee.
He pulled out a pair of vest-pocket field-glasses and scanned her as she
hung there, gleaming in the sunlight, at a height of perhaps five
hundred feet above the white cloths on the grass. He could make out the
Union Jack on her underwings, the huge black raking capitals of her name