That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
lady of a tin travelling theatre-company. Aren't you ashamed of me?
Don't you loathe me?" she wooed with entreating eyes.
"Frightfully. Tell me--where can we have a cosy talk together? I've
got a whole hour before I'm due at Hendon," he said.
"The Rose-and-Green Divan--but there are sure to be people smoking
there. Oh!--I know. The Little Library. Nobody ever goes in, and it's
got a door opening into the Divan. Friends of Members aren't admitted
into the Library--but if you're caught there--you say you were coming
out of the Divan, where outsiders are allowed--and opened the wrong
door--do you switch on?"
He nodded, repressing the desire to ask in whose company she had been
caught there, and followed the tall lithe figure down a short corridor
leading to the back of the ground-floor. The corridor ended in the
Little Library, a studious apartment of bathing-machine dimensions,
walled with curiously new-appearing books of information and reference,
and containing two small writing-tables, each supported by a
rosewood-stained Windsor, a brace of baskets, and two deep, cushiony,
Rothmore chairs. A Member of mature years and mountainous proportions
slept placidly in one of these, with Whitaker's Peerage balanced at a
perilous angle on the vanishing indications of what must once have been
her lap. The subdued murmur of voices trickled in from the adjoining
smoking-room with vaporous wisps of Turkish and Virginia. Save for the
stout slumbering Member the lovers were beautifully alone.
"Good! Oh, boy!--to have got you back again," Patrine said breathlessly
after their kiss. She dropped down noiselessly into the springy
embraces of the vacant Rothmore, and Sherbrand smiling, perched upon the
chair's broad arm.
"This is an unbecoming contrast--isn't it?" She leaned her beech-leaf
tinted head against the plastron of the khaki tunic as his strong hand
crept behind her supple waist. "But I don't care, I can't think of
anything but you, Alan. When do you start to-morrow, and from where? I
suppose you mustn't tell me?" She sighed, rubbing her cheek against him
as the strong arm embraced and held her. "Oh me! What it is to be the
sweetheart of a soldier. Why--Alan!"
She lifted her head and looked at him, frowning, and her long eyes were
black between the narrowed lids. "Do you know how your heart jumped
when I said 'soldier'? Does it mean as much to you as all that?"
He began to stammer a little.
"Oh--well!--you see--we Sherbrands have worn the King's coat for ages.
Ever since there were any Sherbrands--going by the portraits in the
gallery at Whins--where my father lived when he was a boy. He used to
describe them to me until I knew them as well as he did from the Sir
Alan who fought with Talbot against the French at Castillan Chatillon as
a boy, and got killed at Bannockburn thirty-five years later, down to
the jolly old Sir Roger, who fought like a Trojan at Badajoz. He was my
great-grandfather, so I suppose I've always had a secret hankering for
the Service. Like the inherited nostalgia Hillmen's children have for
the mountains, or sailors' for the sea. The kind of feeling that sets
the little Arctic foxes in the Zoo howling at the first sprinkle of snow
in December. Only I knew I mustn't yield to it. You know the reason
why!"
"You told me, and I answered that that kind of reason couldn't affect
you."
"Now you shall hear a plan I've been nursing." His arm again engirdled
her. "Do you know Seasheere? It's a little grassy, cliffy, shingly
village on the South-East coast, three-hours' journey from Charing
Cross. There's a Naval Air Station there that was a Seaplane School not
long ago. We used to send 'em pupils from Hendon: there's a cottage
where they take lodgers not far off. I spent three weeks there last
summer, fishing and motor-boating when I wasn't making friends with
Goody Two Shoes----"
"Who's Goody Two Shoes?"
"The hydroplane!" His voice broke in laughter. "Did you think I meant
a girl?"
"I'm an idiot. Go on about your plan, dear."
"Oh--well! The cottage I stayed at was jolly comfortable, and the
landlady the tidiest old woman that ever grilled a chop. Now
suppose--to-morrow, or a week, or two months hence you got a wire from
Somewhere in France or Belgium saying:
'_Seasheere--such-a-day-and-such-an-hour--Alan_'--would you pack your
kit for a week-end and hop into the train, and come?"
"Without asking--without telling--Aunt Lynette or Uncle Owen?" She
asked the question breathlessly.
"We'll tell the Doctor and Mrs. Saxham directly afterwards." He leaned
his cheek on the beech-leaf hair and his arm tightened about her waist
possessively. "You said my heart jumped just now when you called me a
soldier. How it will jump when I pick you out with the glasses, a tiny
black speck on the cliffs at Seasheere, waiting with the sunset behind
you, or the dawn in your eyes to welcome me back from over the sea. Oh,
my girl!"--his voice wooed her irresistibly--"I've dreamed wide awake of
the joy of such a greeting.... It's up to you to make my dream come
true!" He kissed her hair. "And we'll watch the day die, and sup
together, and you'll sleep at my nice old woman's cottage. And I'll
turn in at the Air Station--and next morning we'll be married at
Seasheere Catholic Church!"
"Married--that's your plan? Ah, Alan! shall we ever be married?" she
sighed.
He laughed softly, pressing her against him.
"The little Catholic Church I've mentioned was built for the very
purpose. Perched on the cliffs as though it might spread its rafters
any minute and flap away to sea." He kissed her hair again. "Don't
think I'm spinning fairy-tales. I've got a Special Licence, so there's
no need to bother about time, or previous residence in the district, or
anything stuffy. Nothing's wanted but Opportunity, the church, and the
priest. And that the local Registrar should put in an appearance.
That's necessary, as we're not of the same faith--yet!"
She freed herself from his embrace, rose to her superb height, and stood
over him.
"You've arranged all this--without consulting me for a minute. You and
your landlady--and your Licence and your Registrar! Boy, I am sensible
of a great desire to box your ears soundly for this!"
"I'd rather take a clout from you than a kiss from any other woman."
She tapped him lightly on both ears, and said, putting a butterfly touch
of lips in the middle of the broad, tanned brow:
"There are both clout and kiss. Now show me the Special Licence."
He thrust his hand into a pocket behind the plastron of the khaki tunic
and pulled out a note-case she had bought and given him. The shiny
square of parchment-paper bearing the signature of his Grace the
Archbishop of Canterbury drew both their heads together over it. In a
compartment meant for stamps was a hard, thin, metallic circle, shining
yellow through tissue paper folds.
"The--Ring?" she whispered.
"The Ring!" He nodded, smiling, as she bent her face over it, kissed
the tissue paper reverently, stuck the Licence back in its compartment,
and gave him back the case.
"And you had these in your pocket this afternoon when I was such a
horrid beast to you?"
"They were burning a hole right into my chest. Why, Pat,
you're--crying!"
She half turned away, mopping her wet eyes with her flimsy little
handkerchief.
"Because--because--it's so blessedly sweet and dear of you to have
planned this. Do you--do you really want it so much?"
"More than anything under the sky," said Sherbrand. "And, don't you see,
it settles the question of providing for you, splendidly! If we're
married, and I get--pipped--Somewhere at the Front--" He stopped short,
for one of her large hands firmly covered his mouth.
"I won't have it. You're not to speak like that, ever!" said a muffled
voice above his head. "If you were killed--don't you
understand--everything'd be over for me! It's a kind of nasty little
Death--only to have you hint at it."
"All right!" he mumbled penitently, and kissed the hand. It was
withdrawn, and he went on:
"I have my little fortune, though Flying has made a hole in it. And I'd
naturally like--as my mother is provided for--the stuff to go to my
wife."
"Oh! if I only were--good enough, I would be your wife to-morrow!" she
groaned.
He got up and took her masterfully in his arms.
"No more of that. I can't stick being made out a--bally pattern. You
are a hundred times too good for me!"
"_But not at all patriotic_," came drifting back upon him in the voice
of Raymond. His embrace never slackened, but he asked of her a
question, looking for the answer to lighten in her eyes: "Pat--you've
not said yet that you're glad they've given me my Flying
Commission!--that you're British enough to give your man, if it came to
giving--for the Old Shop! I know you are!--of course you are!--but say
it--I'd like to hear you."
"I--I----" She caught her breath and her eyes wavered miserably under
his steady gaze. "I'm not a little bit o' good at telling decent proper
lies. I love England--but I love you heaps, heaps, _heaps_ best!" He
felt her pant between his arms.... She writhed her long white neck like
a creature in desperate agony. "I want to eat my cake and have it!" she
wailed, evading his eyes. "Now you know me, you'll despise me. But
it's the truth--anyway! I'd like a man to send to the War--and a man to
keep for myself!"
His arms wrapped her closely and his heart plunged madly against her
bosom. He kissed her on her yielded mouth, and the kiss was a living
flame.
"That will be when we are married and you have a son!" he whispered, and
a drowning horror enveloped her. She cried out and thrust him back, and
might have sunk down at his feet and told her dreadful story then....
Whitaker's Peerage intervened, sliding from the lap of the obese,
reposeful Member, and falling to the carpet with a resounding thump.
The indignant eyes of the awakened lady glared at Sherbrand over her
gold-rimmed spectacles. She demanded, snorting:
"Since when has this room--_hr'runk!_--been thrown open to visitors?"
"I'll inquire," Sherbrand stammered, and the guilty couple fled. That
night Patrine wrote on a card "Seasheere," and thenceafter wore it in
her bosom. But many weeks were over her head before the Call came.
*CHAPTER LIX*
*THE WOE-WAVE BREAKS*
Meanwhile everybody who could get near the Belgian refugees excitedly
pressed hospitality upon them.... The desolate mother was termed "Poor
Dear" in a dozen different keys of sympathy. But she only looked with
dull vague eyes in the faces of would-be philanthropists. When kindly
hands tried to draw the little ones away, she grabbed them and held on.
"She doesn't understand us, the Poor Dear Creature!" Thus the Goblin,
gulping within her rows of pearls, red-eyed under her towering osprey
_panache_. "What she has suffered! It shatters one to realise. Can
one credit that dear Count Tido could have belonged to such a race?
Miss Helvellyn claims her by right of discovery, I believe, so farewell
to my plans for her benefit! But Belgians, I understand, are to be had
in any quantity, and Belgians I must and will have! Think of those rows
and _rows_ of new cottages standing empty at Wathe Regis, and that huge
caravanserai that nobody can live in at the corner of Russell Square!
Do you hear me, Sir Thomas? Oh, how clever of you, Lady Eliason! Sir
Thomas, listen! Lady Eliason _positively promises_ that Sir Solomon
shall interest himself in this. _Of course_ there must be a Fund, and a
Committee, and a Headquarters! The Fund must be Huge, the Committee