That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
description, a dour, stark man whose clothes were alight and burning on
him, stuck grimly to his post among the wreckage of the shattered
Wireless room, sending out the message last dictated by the officer who
lay dead across the blistering steel plating--for the short circuit set
up by the smashed searchlight had created its own separate
conflagration, and the electricity was "running out of everything like
oil."
When the tin-pot heeled over, and, having duly buried her steel chest
and secret documents, went down with colours flying in a smother of oily
steam, men who were saved on the rafts told this tale of Macrombie, who
sleeps well, after Life's thirsty fever, at his post in the Destroyer's
battered Wireless cabin, on the deep-ridged, sandy bottom of the wild,
shallow North Sea.
Patrine felt her heart crushed as in the grip of a cold steel gauntlet.
Her apprehensions had not been unfounded. She and Alan were to be
parted, if not as she had feared.
"I--suppose I ought to congratulate you--" Her unwilling eyes admired
the tall manly figure in the plain workmanlike uniform. The buttonless
tunic with its Lancer plastron, the riding-breeches of ampler cut than
the cavalryman's, the high spurless boots of supple brown leather, and
the belt that carried a revolver and no sword. "What--what are you in?"
she asked draggingly, and he answered with a smile and a flash of his
grey eyes:
"I hope I'm in for some of what's going on!"
"How glad you are!"
"Rather. I should think so! Now that they've let me into the Royal
Flying Corps as a T.S.L. Look at my wings!" He touched the white
outspread pinions on the tunic-breast with a reverent finger-tip and
went on pouring out his story without a break. "It's cost me some
badgering of High Officials of Military Aeronautics at Whitehall, and a
lot of time wasted in baby tests. Squad drill, Harris tube,
bomb-dropping, air-signalling, Webley and Scott practice, and so on.
Now I'm teaching trick-flying to Army aviators from 4.30 A.M. till 11
P.M. The Powers that Be have taken over the Flying Schools--Durrant's
Cafe is our Officer's Mess now. You should see old Durrant in his glory
as Head Waiter. And Mrs. D--" His white teeth flashed as he laughed.
"And they have known of this"--she nodded at the eagle-wings--"while I
have been kept in ignorance! How long?"
"Not quite a fortnight. Don't be unreasonable, dear!"
The new tone stung. Did a yellow star upon the cuffs and
shoulder-straps and a pair of white wings on the left breast mean so
much to him that her just claims upon his confidence seemed wanting in
reason now? Anger and resentment choked her as he added:
"I am here now, as it happens, because I'm crossing the Channel
to-morrow at peep o' day." Something in her pale face made him add:
"Don't worry!--I'm likely to be back again by nightfall. That's what
I've rushed in here to tell you, though I've a man in tow, a Wing
Commander of the French S. Ae. Hot from the Front and just landed at
Hendon. I had to take him in my car to his Embassy, and now I've got to
find him a room at an hotel. When I've done it I'm coming back here to
talk to you. Where on earth has my man got to? Why, there he is,
talking to Lady Norwater. The little chap with the grey moustache and
the gold-banded _kepi_."
"I am honoured by Madame's gracious remembrance," the person indicated
could be heard protesting, during an instant's lull in the Babel of
voices round. "But my own--a thousand pardons! is less accurate."
"Oh!" Margot expostulated, "but you can't have forgotten. That Sunday
of the Grande Semaine--when you were in the Bois, timing a Flying
Officer who was testing an English invention--a sort of a----"
"But assuredly, Madame!" His quick nod and the gesture of his gloved
hand summoned up the scene vividly. "I remember, but perfectly, though
much water has rolled under the bridges since that day. And
Milord--Madame's husband?"
"He's at the Front," Margot explained, "wherever the Front is!"
"Unfortunately at the moment," returned the suave voice, "the Front is
everywhere. It is easy to find without binoculars. _Adieu, Madame_.
_Merci bien de la souvenir si gracieuse, dites mes amities a Monsieur._"
And in another moment he arrived beside Sherbrand, exclaiming with his
vivacious shrug and gesture: "My faith, my friend, your London _Cercle
des Dames_ is a veritable Paradise of Mahommed. Now in Paris, at least
before the War--instead of ten thousand houris to every true Believer,
one counted at least three Adams to every Eve. But I observe your
search has been successful. Will you not present me to Mademoiselle
your _fiancee_?"
And the dapper middle-aged Wing Commander in the gold-banded _kepi_,
whose dark plain uniform displayed the gold badge of the Service
Aeronautique under the Cross of the Legion of Honour, was introduced as
Captain Raymond by an off-hand young Briton who comprehended not in the
least the immense condescension that had prompted the request.
"_Sapristi!_" thought Raymond, as Patrine gave him her large hand and
assured him in her big warm voice that she was frightfully pleased to
meet a friend of Alan's.--"A magnificent type of the human female animal
to have paired with this bluff, simple English boy. Part _femme du
monde_, part romping hoyden, part _cabotine_, she should have been a
Duchesse of the old Napoleonic regime, or at least the effect that lies
behind a _cause celebre_ of the Paris Law Courts of modern days. And
she will be expected by this honest fellow to live in a stucco villa at
Kensington or the Crystal Palace, and bear and rear his children, and
live and die in all the deadly respectability of the British
middle-class _milieu_!"
But he made his beautiful bow and murmured some civil phrases. In the
spring, at the Hendon Flying Grounds of M. Fanshaw, he, Raymond, had
been interested to meet the friend of Mademoiselle. Had been profoundly
impressed by the displayed inventions of a young man so gifted as
aviator and engineer. Had had the good fortune subsequently to obtain
the consent of his own Chiefs of the S. Ae. F. to a test of an
invention--the value of which had been hall-marked by the approbation of
Messieurs les Allemands. True, M. Sherbrand had been the victim of
their unscrupulosity. But Fortune, who knew? might be kinder in the
near future. This War so grievous, so brutal, so deplorable, waged by
the Prussian against Civilisation and Progress, would open up not only
_le metier des armes_, but countless other avenues of prosperity to
thousands of ardent and gifted young men. Like M. Sherbrand. To whom
Raymond said with an authoritative glance of his blue eye: "My friend,
we keep your auto waiting at the door!"
"Ah, but stay!" Patrine began, with a sense of hatred towards the
well-used little Ford runabout standing in much grander company by the
kerb outside the Club: "do stay and lunch and smoke and tell us things
about the War, won't you?"
"A thousand thanks, but impossible, Mademoiselle!"
Raymond shrugged, conscious that her look of disappointment was for
Sherbrand, and pleaded fatigue as an excuse.
"For these are iron times, Mademoiselle," he went on in his smooth,
musical accents, "and we who live in them are unfortunately of flesh and
blood. When the War is done perhaps there will again be social
pleasures like the lunch you were so kind as to offer me. That I am
tempted to accept I will not conceal from you. I have not eaten since I
flew from France at _la pointe du jour_--one of the smallest of the
little hours of this morning, and then I broke fast on two fingers of
little red wine, and a hunch of soldier's bread."
"You mean to say you're fresh from flying the Channel?"
"Crossing the Channel came near the end of my journey, Mademoiselle. I
should have arrived earlier"--he shrugged indifferently--"had not some
German aviators caused delay."
"Oh-h!" Her vexation passed like a breath from a mirror. Her long eyes
danced with delight under her hat-brim. Her breath came quick, her red
lips curled, and a sweet faint pink showed under her creamy skin.
"You're a knight of the skies hot from a fray with two flying
dragons--and you were going without saying a word! What do you think we
Englishwomen are made of?"
"Very desirable flesh, some of you, at least, Mademoiselle," occurred to
Raymond, but he suppressed the equivoque and answered with professional
brevity:
"Mademoiselle, I regret there is but little to tell you. The enemy
possesses an aerial organisation of great effectiveness which is being
chiefly employed in the killing of harmless civilians and the
destruction of unfortified towns. But small success has hitherto
attended his efforts in the Channel. Your British Expedition was
conveyed across the water without the loss of one _piou-piou_, or any
damage received by the explosion of a German bomb. As for the German
aviators of whom I speak, their attitude towards myself and my pilot was
modest. Flying their double-seated military Taubes, of which the wings
and tail resemble those of the dove after which they have been named,
they pursued our biplane half-way from Calais to Dover before deciding
to attack."
"Then--" She hesitated, softly clapping her palms together and dimpling
like a big child over the telling of a new fairy tale.
"Then one climbed, possessing the advantage of a powerful engine, and
dropped a bomb from a height of some 600 _metres_ which exploded without
hitting us and went to the bottom of the sea. While the second aviator,
who was armed with a repeating-carbine, wounded my pilot so severely
that it was only by a miracle of endurance he preserved consciousness
long enough to land without a crash. So I left him at Dover and--with a
pilot mechanic from the Air Station, completed my passage, descending at
Brooklands at twelve _demie_."
"Was your pilot hurt very badly? Will he be able to fly back to
France?"
"Mademoiselle, being a pious Catholic, he has already flown to Heaven."
"He is dead.... And you can joke!" Patrine reproached him. His face
was very wrinkled as he smiled.
"Mademoiselle, if a soldier could not jest at Death upon occasion, Life
for a soldier would be impossible! Of verity, the loss of a good
pilot-_aviateur_ is not a thing to joke about, but fortunately I have
your friend to fill his place."
"_Alan_! You must not--I will never consent to it!"
All taken aback, her colour banished, she fixed Sherbrand with blazing
imperative eyes. He reddened to the hair and his mouth shut firmly.
For the first time there was a clash of wills between the pair.
"Alan, why didn't you ask me?"
He was redder than ever.
"Because it wasn't for you to say. It is an order from my Chiefs--don't
you understand?"
She did not care that the French officer was smiling. She would have
liked to have struck him in his merrily-crinkled face. Wretch! to have
blurted the truth at her that Alan had hidden. What was he saying:
"Permit, Mademoiselle, that I make my _adieux_. I go to secure an
apartment where I may repose myself." He looked at Sherbrand, saying in
his cool tone of authority: "The Aldebaran,--that is in the next street
and a good hotel, is it not so? A little sleep will not come amiss
after a cutlet and a _demi-bouteille_. And whilst I eat we will settle
our _affaires_. Eh, mon lieutenant?"
His gloved hand took Sherbrand neatly by the elbow. He was skilfully
steering him towards the doorway when Patrine, white and flaming, placed
herself in their path.
"My affairs come first!" she was beginning.
"_Shut up!_" came from Sherbrand, in an exasperated aside whisper. "My
duty comes before you--or anything in the world. It should come first
for you if you cared a damn for me!"