That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
alighting not far from Franky. He could see a pair of green eyes
lamping in the darkness, and called, seductively:
"Pussy, pussy! Come here, old girl!"
The purr came near. Franky, with infinite torment reached out a hand,
felt and stroked a warm, furry body. He said, cautiously feeling for
the appreciative, sensitive places at the nape of a cat's neck, and
under the jaws:
"Good old girl. Don't know what they call cats in Flemish, but Pussy
seems to be good enough for you. Stop and scare the rats away, give 'em
fits, eh, Pussy? You're agreeable? Good egg! Oh--I say!"
For Pussy had walked, loudly purring, on to the chest that heaved so
painfully, and proceeded to knead the surface scientifically,
preparatory to curling down. Franky set his teeth, and bore the ordeal.
Thus they kept company until morning, when Pussy, who proved to be a
lean white Tom with patches of sandy tortoiseshell on flanks and
shoulders, withdrew by the fanged opening where the window had been. A
moment later Franky heard his late companion lapping noisily from a
street-puddle and knew envy, in the anguish of his own unrelieved
thirst.
He wandered then for a space of hours or instants, in the days of his
own lost childhood. He was in the night-nursery at Whins, suffering
from some feverish ill. He felt the prickling as of innumerable ants
running up his limbs and the sweat upon his forehead, and called
meaningly to Nurse for drink. But it was his mother in her
dinner-dress, with shining jewels crowning her dark hair, and wreathing
her neck and starring her bosom, who came to the bedside and leaned over
him, put the rumpled hair from his hot forehead, and held to his lips
the cup of milk. Then a droning sound made the room vibrate, and he was
back with his company in the hastily-dug trench across the mouth of the
west-running thoroughfare, and church-bells were clanging and the
telephone-buzzer was calling for the reserve to double out and reinforce
the men in the trench enfilading the bridge....
Then he was awake and the sun was high. Those guns in the west were
silent now, though from the south and south-east came heavy thuds and
long vibrations. Through the rents in the flooring above him by which
the rain had dripped upon him in the night, he was looking at the blue
sky. A big white bird hovered there. Not a bird--a Taube. _The_
Taube, and he had not dreamed the buzzing after all.
Oh, but it was queer to lie there under the keen scrutiny of that eye in
the heavens! It made the prickly ants swarm up Franky's thighs and
sides until the sensation grew unbearable. Hate, fierce hate of the
murderous, beautiful thing droning up there in the azure sky above its
curious misty circle made him see everything red, made him want to yell
and shriek. For Margot was in danger, somehow--somewhere--while one lay
helpless as a log....
"Steady, old child!" whispered Franky to himself, warningly. "You're
going off your chump. Hold still!"
And he held still. The Buzzard ceased to buzz, and floated on, droning.
He fancied that he felt its shadow darken and pass over him, moving from
his head to his feet. The noise of the tractor stopped. Reflected in
the area of a skewed wall-mirror he saw the machine volplane down, and
alight without a falter in the Market Place--before the smoking ruins of
the Town Hall.
*CHAPTER LXI*
*LYNETTE DREAMS*
Upon that same night in October nearly five weeks following the breaking
of the Woe Wave, Lynette Saxham had a strange dream.
It seemed to her that she saw piled up in one colossal heap the riches
of all the world, the world we know and the world we have forgotten; the
treasures of all ages piled up higher than Kilimanjaro, or Aconcagua, or
the cloud-mantled peak of Mount Everest. To her feet as she stood
spell-bound amongst the foothills, rolled jewelled crowns, and huge
barbaric torques and diadems of rough gold, precious cups, vases, and
chargers; outpoured treasures of precious stones and wrought gems of
inconceivable beauty and vileness, wondrous fabrics, marvels of
sculpture, weapons, armour and coins of age beyond the ages--rude discs
of tarnished gold, stamped with the effigies of forgotten kings.
Orders, decorations, the paraphernalia of Pomp, the stage-properties of
Power, the symbols of every religion, save One, were mingled in the
stupendous pile, and a terrible Voice cried:
"Gone is the age of pride in possession! Chattels and fardels are no
more! The days have spilt like pearls from a broken necklace! Time has
eaten the years as the moth a garment of wool! Foredone, foregone,
finished! Who now will gather riches from the Dustheap of the World?"
And as new avalanches of treasure rolled downwards to the reverberation
of that thunderous shout, a Hand of Titanic proportions hurled down upon
the heap a war-chariot of beaten gold, with great scythed wheels, and
jewelled harness; and that vision changed, and the dreamer was drowning,
deep down in clear green seas, under the rushing keel of a huge barbaric
War-galley that was all of gold, arabesqued and bossed with jewels, and
coral, and pearl.
And the sense of suffocation passed, and a wonderful cool peace flowed
in upon Lynette. She seemed to be led by a beloved hand that had been
dust for years, into a bare walled place through which a thin breeze
piped shrilly. Someone was there, doing some manual labour. He turned,
and with a shock of unutterable rapture Lynette was looking in the face
of her lost boy.
Bawne had grown thin and seemed taller. His temples had hollowed, his
plume of tawny-gold hair hung unkempt over his wide white forehead. But
his blue eyes were as sweet as ever. She had never realised how like
they were to Saxham's in shape and colour, and in expression, until now.
He thrust his lower jaw out and knit his brows slightly, as though her
face were fading from his vision, and he wished to fix in mind the
memory of its well-loved features:
"Stay, Mother! Oh! Mother, don't leave me!" he cried, and stretched
out his hands to her, and she awakened, weeping for sorrow and joy.
It was broad day. Her husband was not there. She rose and bathed in
the cold water she loved, and dressed in the simple Quaker-like grey
that set off her fairness, and went out to Mass.... The day's
Preparation was taken from the noble prayer of St. Ambrose, Bishop and
Confessor:
"_And now before Thee, O Lord, I lay the troubles of the poor; the
sorrows of nations, and the groanings of those in bondage; the
desolation of the fatherless; the weariness of wayfarers; the
helplessness of the sick; the struggles of the dying; the failing
strength of the aged; the ambitious hopes of young men; the high desires
of maidens; and the widow's tears. For Thou, O Lord, art full of pity
for all men: nor hatest aught of that which Thou hast made._"
He even loved von Herrnung, who had taken her boy, and kept him in
slavery, and robbed the joyous light from his sweet eyes, and set
amongst his red-brown hair one sinister streak of white. She saw the
bleached forelock dangling before her eyes when she shut them and tried
to pray for the Enemy:
"Oh God! forgive that evil man, and turn his heart towards mercy and
pitifulness, and give me back Thy precious gift, for the love of Her who
is Thy Mother!"
It was yet early when she returned to Harley Street and passed at once
into the Doctor's consulting-room. There, where her lips had first
kissed him, sleeping in his chair, she found Saxham sitting at his
table, with his sorrow of heart revealed in the stoop of his great
shoulders, and his greying head resting upon his hands. Not a sound did
he utter, but the attitude was more than eloquent:
"Oh my son!" it said. "Oh me!--my little son!"
"Owen!" she said, coming to his side and touching him. Then, as he
started and looked up: "Bawne is alive!" she cried. "I have seen him in
a dream, and he has spoken to me. He was in a bare high place with
corrugated iron walls, whitened. It made me think of the Hospital at
Gueldersdorp in the old days, and of a hangar.... His clothes were
soiled and torn, and his hands were blackened. One other thing I
saw--but I will not wring your heart by telling you.... It is enough
that I have seen our boy.... alive. Oh! thank God!" She stopped, and
the rose of joy faded from her cheeks, and only the tears were left
there. Her eyes widened with a terrible doubt. "You _knew_! ... It is
in your face! You had heard ... something, and you did not tell me!"
"I had not the courage. Despise me, for I deserve it! I had news of
Bawne at the end of August. He is with that man who stole him--" He
clenched the hand that rested on the table until the knuckles showed
white upon it and his hair was wet upon his forehead and his mouth was
twisted awry. "Taken with him on errands of aerial
reconnaissance--carried helplessly into battle as a Teddy bear or a
golliwog might be fastened on the front of a racing-plane. And, when I
remember that I bade him risk that journey--" Saxham broke off, and
turned his face away. She came nearer to him and said:
"But he is alive!--alive, even though he be in danger. My dream was sent
to tell me so. Did not the Mother come to me in my sleep and lead me to
him? Just as when she came and sent me here to you. Now I will atone
for these days of selfish grieving. Only give me work to do!"
"Have you not enough upon your hands already? Too much, I have
sometimes feared."
"Only the Hospice and the Schools," she answered eagerly, "and the
Training Houses for the elder women. And, thanks to you, these are
excellently staffed. If I were to die it would make little difference.
Things would go on just the same."
"Would they?"
She stooped, lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it. He looked at
her keenly as she did so, and the over-bright flush upon the thin cheeks
and the hollows about the beautiful eyes, like the burning touch of her
hand and of her lips, told him their tale of woe.
"Not for you. Nothing would ever be the same for you or for Bawne.
Therefore--give me more work."
"There is plenty of work, unhappily," he said, "because of this calamity
that has fallen upon the nation. We have notice that a hundred wounded
men from the Front--many of them cot-cases--will arrive at SS.
Stanislaus and Theresa's at three this afternoon."
"I shall be there!"
"I am not going to try to dissuade you. I will not keep back what God
has given to me from those who have given so much for England. There is
another quarter where you will be of use." His eyes were on the
triptych frame before him. "I speak of that little Lady
Norwater--Patrine's friend--I think you have not met?"
"Oh, but I have. We were made acquainted with each other some weeks ago
at the Club." Her delicate face contracted. "That day when the news
came about the British losses. Just before that poor child Brenda
Helvellyn blurted out the dreadful truth. Owen, it was tragic. She had
known it from the beginning----"
"And the sister forbade her to breathe a hint of it. That is the
attitude of the fashionable Sadducean," said Saxham bitterly, "who not
only denies the Atonement and the Resurrection, but will not admit of
Death."
"But," she asked him, "what of Lady Norwater? Patrine tells me she is
ill."
"She is ill. Lord Norwater--at first reported missing after an action
north of Ypres on the --th is now said to have been killed."
Lynette was silent. Her husband knew why her head was bent and her
white fingers sought a little Crucifix she wore. She was praying for
the dead man. Presently she said:
"He was very brave, I believe?'