That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
"Rather! Come and have a look at her one day."
"Like a shot, if only I'd time! Did she tot to a hatful of money?"
"Something under L700. L500 of that goes for the new 'Gnome' engine.
You see that German--" Sherbrand broke off.
"I remember! Pretty rough on you, that North Sea crossin' business.
Must have been an awful loss. Look here!" Franky reddened again and
began to flounder. "Could I--couldn't I--help with the boodle? Got L700
lying by idle. Frightfully glad if you'd let me chip in!--just in a
cousinly sort o' way!"
"I am much obliged to you, Lord Norwater."
Confound the fellow! how he froze at the least hint of patronage. He
went on, holding his head high:
"You are very kind, but I am not poor, unless as poverty is understood
by people of your world. Apart from what my profession brings me I have
something in the way of income. My mother's brother left me a sum of
money that brings in yearly over L200." He went on as Franky regarded
with unaffected interest the man who wasn't poor on two hundred _per
annum_: "The principal--I suppose it tots up to L6,000--I shall
naturally settle on my wife."
He warmed and brightened with the utterance of the word. His cold eyes
grew soft and his brows smoothed pleasantly. He said with a glowing
pride, and a kind of brave shyness that a woman who loved him would have
adored:
"I have said nothing yet to Miss Saxham about my hopes of a
Commission--I suppose for fear of not pulling the thing off. But the
moment it comes along I shall persuade her to marry me. We'll be man
and wife before I fly for the Front."
As cocky as though he had landed the biggest catch in the matrimonial
waters, thought Franky, instead of that great, slangy, galumphing young
woman without a halfpenny at her back. But he did the amiable, in a way
characteristic of Franky, ushering the guest back to the luncheon-room,
introducing "my cousin" to people worth knowing, doing the honours with
a pleasant cordiality that won upon Sherbrand more and more.
Sherbrand took leave directly after lunch, saying that he had to catch
the afternoon express for Bournemouth. He had left his bag and
suit-case in the hall-porter's care. Would Patrine?--Patrine read the
entreaty in the hiatus and yielded to it, saying Yes, she would drive
with him, and see him off from Waterloo.
"It's lovely of you!" Sherbrand said to her gratefully as they rose.
She gave him her cordial smile and a soft glance from the long eyes.
They took leave of their hosts and passed out together, heads slewing as
the tall young figures went by.
Once in a taxi, spinning down Short Street, Sherbrand possessed himself
of the hand he coveted. Its warm strong, answering clasp thrilled him
to speechlessness. He looked at the long white fingers intertwined with
his own, and asked himself whether he were deserving of a happiness too
great to be credited. When her shoulder touched his, its warm creamy
whiteness gleaming through the dead-white of her thin sleeve, his heart
drummed until it seemed as though she could not but hear it. But his
was not the only heart that beat....
"Thank you." It was her rich warm voice speaking close by his ear.
"Thank you for being so nice to my Kittums! She is the truest little
soul going. We have been chums ever since I joined the Club. Never
quarrelled once--until she made up her mind to marry Franky----"
"And now you're going to marry Franky's first cousin." Sherbrand
laughed rather breathlessly. "'Marry' ... 'Marriage.' Two splendid
words with meanings and meanings beyond meanings packed into them.
Isn't it wonderful? ..." He gripped the warm white hand in his strong
brown one. "Pat, your pulses are playing a tune!"
"So are yours," she answered in a low tone.
"What is it?" He bent his head and set his lips in a swift caress to
the back of the white hand. Then he turned it gently over and looked
earnestly at the blue wrist-veins. They were full and throbbing
tumultuously. Her blood was answering to the call of his. He set a
second swift kiss upon them and his voice was unsteady as he said:
"I know the name of the tune, my wonder. Patrine! Love!--it's the
_Wedding March_!"
"Whose? Grieg's, or Wagner's in _Lohengrin_, or Haydn's?"
"Neither Wagner's nor Haydn's nor Grieg's. Yours and mine! I told Lord
Norwater to-day that I meant to make sure of you before I fly for the
Front."
"You're going to the Front? Oh!--why?" Her long eyes looked at him
with sharp terror in them. He answered:
"When the Powers that be offer me a Commission in the Royal Flying
Corps."
"I see." She breathed freely. "And so--we are not to be married until
then?"
"Would you--to-morrow, if I----"
"You know I would!" Her voice broke over him in a wave of tenderness.
"You've made me love you--so dreadfully, Alan. Now if the little tin
gods hear us--the spiteful little gods who spoil people's
lives--something will happen to part us, soon."
His arm went round her and gathered her against him. He said with a
great thrill of triumph:
"If the Great God is for us we can defy the little tin devils! It was
He who made us for each other, brought us together--will bring us closer
still!"
He added, as a handsome boy of nineteen or twenty, dressed at the zenith
of the fashion, and already showing the worn lines of habitual
dissipation, flashed by driven in a silver-grey Lanchester, with a
notorious Cyprian enthroned at his side:
"How can I thank Him enough for what He has done for me? How many
temptations He has helped me resist, that I might come to you clean
to-day!"
"Were any of the temptations like Mrs. Mallison?" She had freed her
hand from his, and now leaned forwards, hiding her clouded face from
Sherbrand under the pretext of following the grey car with her eyes.
"That was little Wyvenhoe with her.... How young he is! And how old
she must be! Why, I've seen her portrait in a Book of Beauty dated
forty years back--with a chignon and waterfall. They called her the
Marble Marvel in those days, didn't they? Before she pitched her cap
over the windmill, and made hay of the Prunes and Prisms. Now she acts
in Music Hall sketches--has a voice like a raven's, paints a
quarter-of-an-inch thick, and exploits Eton boys. Is anything the
matter?"
Sherbrand had suddenly started and pulled his watch out. Now he rapped
on the glass at the back of the chauffeur, leaned out of the window and
spoke to the man, and resumed his seat, answering:
"The matter is that I had forgotten an important appointment. I can
manage to keep it by the skin of my eyelids by taking the three o'clock
train to Bournemouth instead of the two-thirty Express. You won't mind?
You'll come with me and wait for me?"
"Not a little bit! ..." she answered to the one question and to the
other: "Of course I will!"
*CHAPTER LI*
*THE INWARD VOICE*
The taxi, arrested and reversed on its way to Piccadilly Circus, was
soon speeding Westwards. It whirred up Berkeley Street, traversed
Berkeley Square, and turned into a short street ending in railings,
enclosing grass wonderfully green for August, clipped bushes of
evergreens, and some autumn-foliaged planes.
"We'll keep the man. I'll take his number. He'll look after my kit for
me. Let me help you out, dear!"
He opened a gate in the railings and let her through. A large double
house, with many windows, severely screened with brown curtains and wire
blinds, loomed behind them, commanding the oblong patch of London green.
The Modern Gothic porch of a lofty building of smoke-darkened freestone
rose up before them. Patrine said under her breath, realising the
ecclesiastical character of the edifice:
"Great Scott! It's a church!"
But Sherbrand, who had stayed to shut the gate in the railings did not
hear the tabooed expletive. He caught her up and turned the massive
iron handle of the porch-door which was braced by bands of iron with
trefoil heads, and studded with heavy nails. They went down two shallow
steps into an oblong, vaulted chamber, very cool and dark and fragrant,
tesselated with squares of black and white stone. Slabs of black marble
lined the walls to the height of a tall man. An inscription in Early
English lettering, cut into the black background and gilded, caught
Patrine's eye in passing. She read beneath the symbol of the Cross:
Under were lists of names, all male, ranged alphabetically. Her quick
eye dropped to the initial S. and found Sherbrand there. But when she
looked for her companion, he was waiting hat in hand, at a door some
distance beyond them.
"You will come in and wait for me?" he whispered as she came towards
him.
"Why not? As well here as anywhere!" He opened the door and she passed
in.
To Patrine's left hand, close to the door by which they had entered, was
a small unpretending altar supporting the tinted image of an emaciated,
bearded monk in a black robe girdled with a white cord. A clustered
pillar of red and white marble supported a shallow basin containing a
little water. Patrine shrugged as Sherbrand dipped his fingers and made
upon brow and breast the sacred Sign. Then he seemed to
hesitate--dipped again and held the wetted finger tips towards her,
evidently courting her touch. She shook her head hastily. Her eyes
swept purposely past his, scanning the vast interior. They were
standing in the shorter southern transept of what was _some_ church.
The vast nave was dark and cool, full of silence and shadow and the
perfume of flowers and incense, mingled with a fragrance far subtler
than these. Pillars of richest Modern Gothic design supported the roof,
whose forest of rich dark timbers showed little adornment, except at the
Sanctuary end. Here coffering, diapering, and gilding made for
splendour; rich marble cased the pillars and floored the stately choir
with its rows of stalls, wrought in dark wood, elaborately carved. The
north transept housed the organ, a towering instrument of many pipes.
The scarlet cushion on the vacant organ-bench, the book of chants left
upon the rack, the black and yellow-white of the well-used keys, the
numbered heads of the stops, showed through the lattice-work of a high
wrought-iron screen, wonderfully painted and gilt. Between Patrine and
the nave was a pulpit of red and white marble like the pillars, with a
carved sounding-board of obviously ancient work. Rows of pews flanked
the wide central aisle and the two smaller, and on the right of a lofty
oaken screen that masked the west door, with the mellow light of a great
rose-window falling on it, towered a huge Crucifix in black marble,
upholding a white tortured Figure whose drooping thorn-crowned Head,
like His hands and feet and side, dripped with crimson.... Patrine
winced at the sight, and turned hastily away.
Now she was looking over the head of Sherbrand, who knelt before her
upright and motionless,--at the High Altar, backed with a noble
triptych, its three panels displaying the Annunciation, the Visitation,
and the Nativity. A silver lamp depending by chains from the centre of
the Sanctuary roof burned with a small steady flame before the
Tabernacle--standing between tall tapers burning in gleaming
candlesticks, and vases of huge white golden-anthered August
lilies--hiding behind its broidered curtains and golden doors, the
Ineffable Mystery.
"Come!" Sherbrand's whisper said, close at her ear as he rose up. She
turned and followed him down a side-aisle. "Sit here!" he signed to her,
pointing to a narrow bench. He waited until she was seated, laid his hat
and stick beside her, gave her a grave smile, bent his knees once more,