That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
An electrical thrill of energy and purpose volted through the
humming-bird brain under the silken brown waves. Margot tossed back her
coverings and sat up suddenly in bed. Her great eyes gleamed like a
lemur's in the light of the night-globe. She would steal that march on
Franky, she told herself, to-morrow, or at the latest, the day after.
Wouldn't it be A1?
The small face dimpled into mischievous smiles. She caught a glimpse of
it in a mirror on the opposite wall and kissed her little hand to Margot
with saucy gaiety. If Franky, down at Westminster, could only know what
Kittums was planning! She had a vision of the Houses of Parliament
under the white-hot August moonlight, outlined in bluish-green and
dazzling silver against a background of glittering black. Like a
Limoges enamel, she told herself. The long lines of electric arc-lights
stretching over the bridge, up Whitehall and down Victoria Street--all
along the Thames Embankment--strings of diamonds--crowds and crowds of
people ... talking bosh about War when there wouldn't----She was asleep.
Asleep, while packed thousands waited under the blue glare of the
arc-lights for the rising of the Curtain on the World Tragedy, of which
four yearlong Acts have been played out. For the tag of which Humanity
is waiting with held breath, too weary even to cry out: "_How long, O
Lord?--how long?_"
Prone to assume strange, angular attitudes when speaking, the Foreign
Secretary hung over and clutched at the dispatch-box before him, as
though it literally contained that most malignant of all the swarm of
Evils that issued from the Box of Pandora, as he told his hearers of the
rejection of the German bribe and warned them of the imminence of a
Declaration of War. Then, amidst increasing, deepening excitement, the
Prime Minister read the appeal of the King of the Belgians, and told of
Great Britain's ultimatum to Germany....
No wonder those close-packed crowds of sturdy Britons waited under the
blue glare of the arc-lamps to hear Big Ben bell the midnight hour. As
the great voice boomed Twelve from the illuminated square of the dial
amidst the striking of the countless clocks of London, a tremendous roar
of cheers acclaimed the pipping of the egg of Fate and Destiny, echoed
by other crowds in distant thoroughfares, spreading in waves to the
unseen horizon, whose East was pregnant with the Kaiser's Day.
That Fourth of August; Eve of the Feast of British Oswald, King, soldier
and Saint, whose Address to his Northumbrian warriors before the battle
of Denisburn, fought against Pagan Cadwalla in 633, the Catholic Church
enshrines in Her Chronicles:
"_Let us all kneel and jointly beseech the true and living GOD ALMIGHTY
in His Mercy to defend us from the doughty and fierce enemy. For He
knoweth that we have undertaken a just War...._"
"Whereupon," says the Venerable Bede, "all did as the King commanded.
And advancing towards the enemy with the first dawn of day, they won the
victory their Faith deserved."
And before midnight of this pregnant Fourth of August, from the great
Wireless Station of Eilvise in Hanover, Germany flung round the world
this vital message to all her mercantile Marine:
"War declared on England! Make as quickly as you can for a neutral
port!"
On the outbreak of War the British Navy cut the All German cables. One
by one the German Colonial Wireless Stations were dismantled. When the
great station at Kamina in Togoland fell, the only remaining link in the
system was between the Fatherland and the United States.
Dawn outlining the silken blinds, vied with the blue glimmer of the
night-lamp as Margot wakened, to hear, in the hush that precedes the
Brocken-hunt of Sloane Street motor-traffic, Franky's low, urgent
appeal:
"_Kittums_! Kittums, best child!"
"What on earth did you wake me for?" said a sleepy and distinctly cross
voice.
"Couldn't help it! I simply had to tell you!" Franky began.
The little hand touched the electric clock-button and on the ceiling
wavered a gigantic dial of yellow brightness.
"_Had_ to! At three o'clock in the morning! When I was having such a
tophole dream! Thought I was back at the Club in my three dear rooms
with the Adams doors and chimney-pieces--and Pauline came in with a huge
basket of white flowers--and I asked: '_Who are they for?_' And she
said: 'For Mademoiselle!' And I was Margot St. John--and had never been
married!" There was infinite wistfulness in the little voice.
"White flowers mean death, don't they, when you dream of 'em? And I'm
sorry your dip in the Bran Tub of Matrimony has turned out such a bad
investment. What I came to tell you should revive your hopes of making
a better one, my child!"
That jarring note of mingled resentment and irony, how new and strange
it sounded to Margot! Until this moment Franky's voice had never been
anything but gentle. It was gentle now as he said, at his dressing-room
door:
"Finish your sleep. I was rather a brute to wake you!" He was going
without a backward glance.
"Come back! Come off it! Don't be dignified!" Margot called after the
retreating figure. "I'm quite awake now, so you'd better tell. What's
on?"
He came back to the bedside, looking tall and shadowy in the blue
dimness. Margot put up a little hand and patted his cheek. There were
wet drops upon the smooth, warm skin.... Perhaps he had walked home,
and it had been raining. Or--
"_Franky_! You're not----"
He captured the little hand and took it in both his own, and squeezed
it. He said in a cheerful but rather choky voice:
"Of course not! And--the news could have waited. Only--since midnight
England and Germany have been at War. The Big Scrap is three hours old.
First battalion of Ours is under orders for the Front--I've exchanged
out of the Second with Ackroyd--too sick a man for fightin' just now,
luckily for me. You know Ackroyd. Used to flirt with him
frightfully--to give me beans when I'd vexed you when we were first
engaged. When do we go, did you ask? Liable to be off at any old
minute. By-bye, little woman. Too late to go to bed--heaps of things to
attend to. God bless you! See you at brekker--or lunch, if I've luck."
*CHAPTER L*
*THE EVE OF ARMAGEDDON*
Kittums, upon that fateful morning, coming down to breakfast and finding
no Franky, was annoyed. One might just as well have had breakfast in
bed. She didn't want any, but Cook would be hurt if the chowder and
eggs, and croquettes of chicken weren't eaten. Therefore Margot ate--to
avoid wounding the cook. The daily papers she left untouched, knowing
that War would leap out from the huge capitals heading the columns and
strike her in the eyes.
She had herself dressed and 'phoned for the car. The house did not seem
a place to stay in, somehow. Dowd was busy in his master's room,
ordering Jobling about in loud authoritative tones and being waited upon
by the maids. Even Pauline, ordinarily scornful, referred to him as
"Monsieur Dowd" instead of "_zat man Dow!_"
Once in Sloane Street, the War rushed at you. Groups of men, young, old
or middle-aged, stood talking at every street-corner, newspapers rustled
in every hand. You couldn't escape the papers. Huge flaring headlines
shrieked from the broad-sheets in the gutters and on the railings: "WAR
DECLARED! ULTIMATUM EXPIRED. BRITISH FLEET READY FOR BATTLE. INVASION
OF BELGIUM BY GERMAN ARMY CORPS!" The drapery salesman who was to win
the Victoria Cross, called from the top of a Knightsbridge motor-bus to
the grocer's assistant who was to receive the Medaille Militaire at the
doughty hands of Joffre.... The budding airman who was to bring down a
Zeppelin single-handed chuffed past on a motor-cycle--the girls who were
to make shells for British guns, or pack made ones with T.N.T. and
kindred explosives, tripped along in their transparent hobble-skirts, to
meet Alf and Ted at the Tube. And neither Alf, who subsequently took
five Huns prisoner by the single hand, shepherding them back to the
British lines with dunts of the gun-butt and sarcasms more pointed, nor
Ted, who threw himself down over the exploding bomb, dying that his
comrades in the trench might live, dreamed what kind of chick would pip
Fate's egg for him or her presently. Yet the dullest face wore a new
expression, in the tamest eyes burned the light of battle! Unquenched
it burns in them still, after four dreadful years of War.
The Club, already deserted by August holiday-makers, would be utterly
abandoned to chimney-sweeps, charwomen and window-cleaners, and yet
Margot told the chauffeur to drive to the Club.
Turning out of Piccadilly she discovered Short Street to be blocked by
taxi-cabs. An endless procession of telegraph-boys plunged in and out
between the thudding swing-doors of the vestibule. The vestibule was
congested with battered, dusty ladies, ladies' maids even dustier and
more battered, and travelling bags battered and dusty to the _nth_
degree.
Some of the bags were bursting, not a few of the maids were hysterical.
All the returned travellers were telling their adventures at once. The
air was thick with exclamations, explanations, cries and ejaculations.
Unfed, unslept, baggageless and penniless in many instances, the members
of the Ladies' Social--seeking health, or novelty, in half the
pleasure-resorts upon the map of Europe--had come hurtling back to Short
Street like leaves driven before the furious blast of War.
"Has anything happened?"
Lady Norwater addressed this query to the Club hall-porter, a bald
person of habitually slow movements and singularly bland address. The
man gnashed his teeth at her, uttering a sound between a groan and a
snarl--made as though to tear non-existent hair,--leaped with
astonishing nimbleness over a pile of luggage, and vanished. Margot
would have made a note of his conduct in the Complaints register, but
that the hall-table was obliterated by heaps of rugs, dust-cloaks and
waterproofs. Wondering, she made her way into the big General Room on
the ground-floor.
Here travel-creased, dust-smeared members sat in voluble rows on the
comfortable sofas, or reclined speechless in the capacious armchairs.
Medical men, hastily summoned by 'phone, moved noiselessly from patient
to patient. Husbands and male friends listened not unmoved, to piteous
recitals of adverse experiences undergone on enemy ground.
Kittums, snatched into the whirl, moved from friend to friend, gathering
experiences. Mrs. Charterhouse, with her Pekinese pug and her maid, had
just arrived at Homburg to undergo treatment for a twenty-two-inch waist
when the War Cloud gathered monstrous on the horizon. Had not her Swiss
doctor written a warning instead of a prescription the white and golden
Cynthia, Mademoiselle Mariette and Chin-Chin, would at this moment have
been languishing on rye bread and bean coffee in a Teutonic jail.
"As it is, we've spent a whole week, and every sou we had on us making
the journey!" said Cynthia, in her plaintive tones. "They held us up at
Frankfurt, Basel, and Geneva! What inquisitions, what scowling
suspicious looks! To be hunted and suspect makes you wicked, I've found
out! When we got to Paris at four yesterday morning and took a rickety
_fiacre_ to the Palais--all the taxis have vanished!--I could have
_prayed_ for a cup of tea and a roll! But at the Palais all was
confusion. The hotel was shutting up--every male servant called to the
Reserve. We got to the 'Spitz'--the same experience there! Exhausted,
I sat on something in the vestibule--it moved, groaned, and I found it
to be the wreck of Sir Thomas Brayham. He and Lady Wathe, his man and