That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
that solves for the _avion_ the problem of stability. And--listen
well!--he carried a young boy with him in the _nacelle_. It was the man
who robbed you. Von Herrnung! Could you not have guessed before?"
It seemed to Sherbrand that he had always guessed. Raymond went on:
"When I read of the finding of the wreck of your 'Bird' in the North
Sea, I knew what _coup_ the Prussian and his confederates had carried
out. We had met in Berlin, and at the Hanover aerodrome, and at Paris.
And--I could have shot him the other day if it had not been for the
child. The legions of the modern Attila employ women and babes as
bucklers and breastworks, by their Emperor's order. Perhaps he carried
the boy for protection!" His moustache bristled like an angry cat's as
he added:
"A beastly idea, but the German Idea is bestial. Well, _au 'voir_!
To-morrow, six _demie_, we start from the aerodrome!"
He rose, whisked his napkin over his mouth, and said, giving Sherbrand a
hearty hand-grip:
"I shall be punctual. Do not forget. My compliments to Mademoiselle!"
But Sherbrand was occupied less by thoughts of his angry love than by
Raymond's story of the boy in the German warplane. He telephoned to Sir
Roland and to Saxham before he drove back to the Club thinking:
"Bawne!--It must be Bawne!--out there in the midst of all those horrors.
If I could only meet that fellow von Herrnung! ... I've owed him no
grudge because he robbed me.... But--for this--I could kill him now!"
*CHAPTER LVI*
*LA BRABANCONNE*
"You saint, Pat!" Margot, amidst Raymond's polite excuses, had
recognised Sherbrand's hatchet-face under the khaki cap. "You've stolen
a whole morning for me from your Flying Man. Why didn't you tell me
he'd come back to town? How perfectly tophole he looks in tea-leaves!
Franky and I came across that French officer who was with him, last
June, in Paris. We're been rubbing noses on the strength of having met
before. Is Alan going to the Front? My poor Pattums, it'll be your turn
to be haunted. Here's Rhona Helvellyn. Cheer, Rhona! Do tell us why
you look so smudgy? Have you been hiding up the chimney of the House of
Commons, or bombarding a Minister's front door with coal?"
She beckoned, and Rhona came stalking through the crush of marvellously
got-up members, the round, fair, freckled boy-face that topped her long
swan-neck and deceptively sloping shoulders pinched with weariness under
the wreck of a Heath hat, her usually immaculate tailor-mades covered
with the dust of what might have been a Claxton Hall conflict or a
Downing Street Demonstration, and strange fires burning in her
light-lashed eyes.
"Am I such a sweep? I feel one! But so'd you be grubby if you'd done
the crossing from Folkestone to Ostend and back again to London without
a dab of a puff. I'd an appointment here at three-thirty." Beyond
anything in life Rhona plumed herself on her punctuality. "Mrs.
Saxham--_the_ Mrs. Saxham, had promised to meet me in the Chintz Room."
The Chintz Room is the first-floor drawing-room securable for private
teas and interviews. "We got in too ravenous even to wash for lunch.
You should have seen us eat. My hat! the scrum on those boats. And the
dirt. Nothing but a Turkish bath will get me clean again. As for
Brenda, she's a nigger." Thus Rhona in her loud young accents.
"Nobody'd believe she'd been born a white girl!"
"Is she here?"
"My Christmas! I should rather hope so! Upstairs scraping off the
top-crust before I take her to Eccleston Square. Don't do to startle
the Mater. She's been frightfully off-colour with worry over her
precious youngest. You see, Brenda was due home for the Autumn holidays
from the Convent of the Dames de l'Annonciation at Huin on the Sambre,
when the War broke out. And--Huin's near Charleroi, where they say the
Germans are--and we'd nary a letter, and no answer to a hailstorm of
wires from the Mater. So I got passes and permits on the Q.T. and
skipped over to Ostend--to see what might be done."
"And you got through?"
"Did I? Not much! We don't get things properly rubbed into us--tucked
away in our blessed old island. I forgot that Belgian trains wouldn't
be running from Ostend to Brussels, now the Germans have got a grab on
there.... As for getting South-East by Courtrai and Valenciennes--all
trains were required by the Allies for military purposes. Perhaps if I'd
been a hefty War Correspondent or an Army Nursing Sister or a V.A.D. in
diamond earrings and a Red Cross armlet, I'd have had a chance. But I'm
doubtful! Transport officers, English and Belgian, keep their mouths
shut--and once they've opened them to say "No!" they never open 'em
again. And"--Rhona breathed as though she had been running--"there were
Official War News placards stuck up at the Customs Office, and on the
quays and at the Prefecture. They said that the Germans under von
Buelow have been having a scrap with the 5th French Army on the
Sambre--from Namur to Charleroi--and that the French have been beaten
back. And the hospitals are crowded with Belgian and German
wounded"--she gulped and something twinkled on her pale eyelashes--"and
trains crammed with more keep coming in and in. I've seen some sights, I
tell you, that gave me horrors. That showed me, even more than those
Ostend quays and wharves and squares and Places--packed solid with
refugees--Great Christmas!--shall I ever forget 'em!--the devilish,
hellish work of War!"
"Refugees.... Common people?" Margot was a little puzzled. Rhona
nodded and repeated:
"Refugees. Swells and mechanics, rag-pickers and shopkeepers, sweeps,
schoolgirls, lacemakers, and students. Professors, priests, and
prostitutes. Madame la Comtesse and her gardener's wife, wheeling the
babies in trams and go-carts. Dust-covered, dirty, done up, desperate,
with faces that make you think of the damned in the Tartarus scenes of
Orpheus and Eurydice. And someone squealed my name, and there was
Brenda. Just got in, with three of the Sisters, and a baker's dozen of
English pupils and a herd of other miserables, evacuated from Charleroi
and Huin. Three-and-a-half days on the journey, travelling by fits and
starts on branch-lines--tramping when trains weren't available. Eating
whenever anything was to be had, and going without when there wasn't!
Sleeping in barns and on the floors of railway-station platforms, or
waiting-rooms, when they were lucky--such a pack of tramps you never saw
in your life. But Great Scott! how thundering glad I was to get hold of
Brenda and whisk her away from that Chorus of the Damned in Orpheus,
pent up like cattle behind ropes, and moaning and stretching their arms
out to the sea!"
"Why on earth the sea?"
A foreign voice, resonant and rather nasal, startled Margot by
answering:
"Pardon, Madame. Because these most unhappy fugitives believe that
salvation and safety may be found in England, from whence come those
strong brown English soldiers who are fighting in Belgium now."
"Are there--" Margot was beginning. But Rhona was introducing the
speaker at length as Comte d'Asnay, Capitaine Commandant and Adjutant of
the Belgian General Staff, Attached to the General Staff on the Third
Division of the Belgian Army, and d'Asnay was saying with a smile:
"Mademoiselle bestows upon me all my titles, possibly because we
Belgians have so little else left."
"Except Honour," snapped Rhona.
"Except our Honour and our self-respect, and a few other non-negotiable
securities," he said, "that do not bring us much of credit on the
Bourses of Vienna and Berlin. But Madame was asking of the refugees.
Many from Liege have escaped to Antwerp or into Holland, thousands are
rushing from Namur into the bosom of France. But from Louvain and
Brussels and Tirlemont they flock to Ostend. The steamers of the Channel
service are crowded with those who have money and can obtain the
necessary _laissez-passers_. Your town of Folkestone is encumbered with
arrivals. Were stones pillows there would be a head for every stone.
But those who have neither money nor passports--and many of these were
rich a week ago--remain, as Mademoiselle has told you, to weep, and
stretch their arms towards the sea."
"They'd rush the boats," declared Rhona, "only that the Companies keep
up the gangways. I suppose," she grimaced, "the authorities at Ostend
don't want a scare. They believe--I hope they may get it!--there'll yet
be an Autumn Season. Hang these profit-hoggers! If I'd my way I'd
lower every blessed gangway and let everyone who wanted walk on board.
If Belgium hadn't faced the music there'd be Germans in England now,
murdering and burning.... They've a right to come. Let 'em all come!
Britain's big enough, I should hope!"
"_Brava, Mademoiselle. Bis!_" d'Asnay applauded noiselessly. "That is
what you said to me on the deck of the steamer. Say it again, say it
often, and the people will be let come!"
"Oh, I've my plan." Rhona's light eyes sparkled wickedly. "People here
want waking up. They're kept in cotton-wool. Eyes bunged up and ears
stuffed. What they want is--to see and hear. Well, a few of 'em are
doing it. That," she nodded knowingly at d'Asnay, "is where my
Distinguished Visitors come in."
The lips under the fiercely-waxed moustaches smiled. Margot liked the
look of this officer of the Belgian General Staff, with the savage eyes
and the smooth olive skin, the pointed chestnut beard, fiercely-waxed
moustache, and the cool, polite manner. He wore the uniform of the
Belgian Chasseurs a Cheval, and the vulture-plumes of his high shako
were cut and broken and scorched in places, the gold braiding of his
dark blue tunic was tarnished and weather-beaten, and the grey,
blue-striped overalls and spurred black knee-boots were rusty with old
mud and white with new dust. "You're from the Front?" she queried, as
she moved with Rhona and the Belgian towards the glass swing-doors,
giving access from the vestibule to the Club's big ground-floor
drawing-room.
He answered:
"There are several Fronts--and I have the honour to come from one of
them, Madame."
"With dispatches?"
"Possibly with dispatches, Madame!" He answered with an amused
side-glance at the small, vivacious face. "Though there are swifter
methods of transmitting intelligence than by entrusting letters to a
messenger's hands."
As he moved beside her, courteously replying, she saw the crimson and
green enamelled, purple-ribboned Cross of the Belgian Order of Leopold
shining upon the dark blue tunic-breast.
"How are--things--getting on? Nobody tells us anything," twittered the
humming-bird. "We might live at the North Pole."
"Madame might find even at the North Pole compensations for the low
temperature and the lack of society." The vulture-plumes on the dark
blue shako nodded as he turned his face to her. "In the fact that there
are no Boches there," he added, and the smile that had curved the
soldierly moustache vanished as though the word had wiped it from his
mouth.
"Do tell me what are Boches?" Margot begged, kindling to interest. He
answered with an intensity that dug deep lines at the angles of his
nostrils, and puckered the corners of the eyes that burned under his
frowning brows:
"They are a nation of beings, Madame, that are no longer men!"
"Germans you mean, don't you?" she asked after a little pause of
bewilderment, staring with shocked, dilated eyes at the left side of
d'Asnay's close-cropped head, now revealed to her as he removed his
shako, and standing a little in advance of the two women, held back with
the thrust of his broad shoulders a leaf of the drawing-room
swing-doors. The four-inch square of white surgical plaster adhering to