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That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day

Richard Dehan

"I will at once. Dear Pat! how glad I shall be to have her!" "This is Patrine speaking now!" Saxham's steady hand touched Patrine's in transferring the receiver of the telephone, and the chill of it stung like the touch of death. She could not control her trembling as she answered: "You are always so kind to me, dear Aunt Lynette!" "No, dear! In an hour, then? Take care of my precious," the sweet voice pleaded, "until I see you both..." "Yes--yes!" Saxham's hand hung up the receiver, rang off, and steadied Patrine, whose knees were melting under her weight: "Don't ask me ... any more ... I--can't!" she begged of him brokenly. He said, and with those deep lines that showed in his hard grey face, and his light eyes staring haggardly from caves that grief had dug about them, Saxham looked older by twenty years: "I know it was hard, but the thing had got to be done. How could I bludgeon her with the truth, whispered over a wire? Once face to face, the first glimpse of me will show her that I have lied to her. God help me!" said the Dop Doctor; "I told her I had stayed on here with Bawne to give him the treat of seeing a night-flying display." "How--horribly clever of you!" "So clever," Saxham answered harshly, "that I shall probably regret it to the end of my days. In the whole of my practice I have never known a well-meant deceit do any good--rather the opposite. Consequently, I preach to my patients Truth before everything--and break down and lie when my own turn comes--like the damned coward I am." "We shall leave here now in a few minutes," went on the Doctor, glowering at his chronometer. "I sent Keyse away with the car upon a message. He will be here to take us home to Harley Street at half-past nine. You have ample time to telephone to Berkeley Square for your clothes and so on.... Lady Beauvayse's maid can pack them for you, I presume?" "Oh, yes. She's decent in the way of doing things for me." "Very well." The Doctor left the telegraph-hut, and Patrine 'phoned to Berkeley Square. Then, with a sudden recollection of an appointment which must be cancelled, she gave the number that meant Margot's newly-furnished mansion, and presently heard the little bird-like voice chirping: "Yes, this is 00, Cadogan Place. I'm Lady Norwater! ... Is that you, Pat? Yes? What cheer? ... I'm having a long, deadly domestic evening. Franky's reading an improving book aloud to me--at least he was when you rang up--'Matrimony for Beginners. A Handbook to Happiness,' it's called. But I don't believe the man who wrote it ever had a live wife." "Probably not. Margot, pet, I can't possibly lunch with you to-morrow!" "Don't say you back out because of the book! Fits has got it now under the sofa." Fits was Franky's lady bull-terrier. "And by the time she's done with it there won't be much left. Say you'll come!" Margot urged. "Franky's got to test a new car--so Rhona Helvellyn's coming with two or three Militant pals of hers. I'll give you lobster _Americaine_ and cold lamb in mint aspic--and strawberry mousse. There!" "I'm frightfully sorry, my dinkie, but it simply can't be!" "What tosh! And we're going to talk over ideas for speeches at the Monster Meeting of Women in October at the Royal Hall. And Rhona has a Grand Slam in the way of surprises--did she say anything to you about the Mansion House Banquet demonstration she's thought of for Monday night?" "Yes, and I'm down on it--like houses!" declared Patrine. "Is Rhona really spoiling for a taste of skilly and yard-exercise? Don't you get mixed up. Think of Franky reading the paragraphs: 'POPULAR YOUNG PEERESS ON THE SUFFRAGE WAR-PATH. SOCIETY BEAUTY HECKLES THE LORD MAYOR! VISCOUNTESS NORWATER BURSTS UPON BANQUETING BISHOPS, IN THE CHARACTER OF A WOMAN WHO WANTS A VOTE!'" Patrine called good-bye and rang off, turning with the smile upon her lips to see Sherbrand standing behind her with a long white coat upon his arm. "I have brought you a wrap. A lady forgot it here the other day. Let me help you to put it on." Patrine shivered as he drew the large loose garment round her. It was a white Malta blanket-coat, very soft and fleecy and warm. "Shall we have another turn on the Grounds before the Doctor's car----" Sherbrand was beginning, when the Chief removed the Wireless head-band and came forward. "Miss Saxham, I must detain you for a minute, I am afraid." Sherbrand went out of the hut. At a sign the pale clerk evaporated. Sir Roland moved nearer to Patrine. How old he looked! she thought. "You are done up! _Esquinte_, aren't you?' "I am tired, but neither done up nor the other thing. Miss Saxham, you just now put me in possession of the details of a Suffragist plot. The friend of a friend of yours, backed by some other viragoes of the militant order, intends--I quote your own words!--to a bid for a diet of skilly, and prison-yard exercise, by interrupting the after-dinner speakers at the Mansion House Banquet on Monday night. Kindly let her know from me that the stewards will be prepared to prevent her doing so,--and tell her that women will never make successful conspirators until they learn to hold their tongues! Now, good-night. Your incautiousness has rendered Miss Helvellyn a service. She will bless it one day if she doesn't now." He took Patrine's hand in his frank, strong clasp. The haggard lines on the keen bronzed face did not mar the beauty of its kindliness. "You have given her a chance. Let's hope she makes the most of it. To herd with the--wild she-asses isn't the way to serve her sex. Rowdiness and shrieking will never get the Vote for Women. Burning down empty country-houses won't land a female Member in the House of Parliament. It isn't Propaganda to--behave like an improper goose. Mind you tell her! That you, Saxham?" as a tall figure came towards them out of the glimmering darkness fitfully splashed by the petrol-flares now burnt down and dying out. "Best take your niece home to Harley Street, she is thoroughly tired. Sherbrand and myself and Mr. Burgin here are good for hours yet." *CHAPTER XLII* *SAXHAM BREAKS THE NEWS* "Owen! ..." Lynette was dressed in a delicate, filmy black chiffon dinner-gown, and as Saxham's latch-key clicked in the front door-lock and she rose up out of the tail carved armchair that stood beside the large hall fireplace, her paleness seemed to diffuse light, like the whiteness of the moon. "Owen ... He is not ... What ..." Her wide bright glance went past the tall wrapped-up figure of Patrine to the taller shape that bulked behind her. No small active boy-form danced in its wake. She put out her arms, groping blindly--swayed and would have fallen, but that Saxham strode past Patrine, caught the slender figure in his powerful embrace, turned and carried his wife away down the short corridor that led to the consulting-room. "Miss Pat, my dear! There's cold supper all laid an' ready waitin' in the dining-room. By the Doctor's special orders, and I was to see you eat." Thus Mrs. Keyse, now for years housekeeper at Harley Street, a little light-haired woman, common of speech and innocent of grammar, but a pearl of price in the Doctor's estimation and her mistress's right hand. "Don't say they fed you at 'Endon on 'am and salad an' pigeon-pie. Trash is the word," said Mrs. Keyse, "for resturong pastry, and them there piegeons, if language could be given 'em, would bear me out in what I say." But Patrine refused baked meats, submitting to be escorted to her room and tenderly fussed over by the kind, Cockney-tongued little woman, and yellow-haired pink-cheeked thirteen-year-old Janey, out of whose small triangular face looked the honest grey eyes of W. Keyse. Both Mrs. Keyse and Janey had been crying, for Keyse, who acted as the Doctor's chauffeur, had broken bad news in the kitchen-regions. Master Bawne, according to Keyse, had been taken for a trip in one of them Hairos by a German flying-bloke, and it was feared--not having returned or been heard of--that Something or Other had gone wrong. Mrs. Keyse, a born optimist, rejected the idea of accident or casualty with ringing sniffs of incredulity. Master Bawne, the blessed dear! had prob'ly bin kidnup' by some foreign Nobleman wanting a Nair. Trust a German, Mrs. Keyse would never! having when a young woman in service at Alexandra Crescent, Kentish Town, N.W., been treated something frightful by a young man who travelled in shaving-sets of German silver and other fancy articles of Teuton origin. Keyse must often have heard her mention That There Green? Keyse responded, lighting his pipe, for his wife and daughter had accompanied him to their own private parlour in the basement, looking out across the yard to the garage over which Billy and Janey had been born: "Twice a day since you and me stood up before the dodger to git married. But you never tipped me as 'ow the bloke was a bloomin' Fritzer before. 'Ow do you make it out? Switch me on to the notion! 'Cos o' somethink in the German nickel 'e drummed in gettin' into 'im an' affectin' 'is blood?" Mrs. Keyse, impervious to sarcasm as incapable of grammar, maintained that the subject under discussion had spoke wiv' a Naxent particularly noticeable when upset. Broken English, in moments of passion, with red eyes and white 'air simpular to one o' them Verbenas, had in conjunction with a decided bent towards bigamy, and an appetite for other people's savings, distinguished That There Green. W. Keyse and Janey went off to bed, and the other servants, instructed through the Doctor's consulting-room speaking-pipe, shut up the house and retired, all save the night-maid who answered the telephone, and attended to the midnight rings at the hall-door. But Mrs. Keyse did not follow the household. The Doctor and Mrs. Saxham were still shut up together in the consulting-room. Mrs. Keyse owned to herself that she had talked all that rubbage about That There Green and cetra, to hide that her heart was as water in her bosom, and that she trimbled and shook all over after the fashion of them Fancy shapes of Chicken in Haspeck, or Coffin cream, or Blue Mange coloured with Scotch Anneal. It grew late and later. The flares on the Flying Ground, many times renewed, had died down to greasy black ash in the scorched and dented buckets, before there was a movement or a sound in the dark consulting-room. Then the woman who sat in the chair sighed, and the long quivering breath she drew, stirred the thick hair of the man who knelt upon the floor before her, holding her in his arms. "Owen!" "My wife!" The sigh that had escaped her seemed to flutter through the unlighted room like some dusky-winged creature of the darkness. She leaned her face upon his brow, pressing her lips upon the smooth place above the broad meeting eyebrows. The first kiss she had ever given Saxham had been placed just there. Now the sweet lips were cold. He could feel how the delicate white teeth were set behind them. Had she relaxed her grip upon herself he knew she must have cried aloud. Nor could he help her save by his sustaining hold, and the silence of a grief only equalled by her own. Thus they had remained, speechless through the hours; drawn closer than ever by the anguish of mutual loss. Now she stirred in Saxham's arms, and spoke collectedly: "Tell me Bawne is not--dead! Give me courage to go on waiting. And yet, do not help me to deceive myself or you, with a false hope." "If the worst had happened," said Saxham, almost appealingly, "should we not have known it?"