That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
real?" he asked wistfully, and Franky answered, huskily:
"Rather! In fact, I'm a lot more real than you. Who are you, since
we're gettin' personal?" He repeated slowly after the boy:
"'Bawne Mildare Saxham, Scout No. 22. Fox Patrol, 331st London W.'
Seems good enough." He shut his hot eyes wearily. "But if you're
solid--you'd get me a drink!"
There was a little stir. The Scout had gone. Franky knew it without
opening his eyes, yielding to the deadly sinking faintness engendered by
the effort of speech. A mountainous weight crushed his chest, and his
legs were cold and heavy as ingots of pig-iron. It occurred to him that
at this rate the--wind-up--could not be far off. And a great horror
fell upon him like a pall, and cold sweat broke forth and streamed upon
his haggard face and broken body. Death for one who so loved Life and
the pleasant things of a commonplace existence.... A cricket-match, a
day with the hounds, a funny _revue_, a game of polo, a break at
billiards, a clinking run with the car, a fine cigar. Mess in camp
after the hard day's march, long, cool drinks with bits of ice tinkling
in the tumbler. That new, fierce pleasure tasted in his first
experience of real fighting.... And oh! how much sweeter than these the
scent of Margot's hair, the light of Margot's eyes, the clasp of her
arms about his neck, the hope of fatherhood, never now to be
realised....
"My little chap!" he muttered, and his heart wept, but no tears came to
his arid eyes. Then something cold touched his mouth. The rim of a cup
with water in it. "Thank you!" he said, after a gulping draught, opening
his eyes with the sense of reviving coolness stealing through his
parched vitals. "That's--absolutely IT!"
The boyish treble said with a quaver in it:
"If I set this can beside you--I got the water from the pipe that is
running--and the broken cup near it, could you manage to dip it in? Are
you able to move this hand?"
"First class!" whispered Franky, lifting the member a very little way
and dropping it again. "The--the other arm came in for it when the
shrapper hit me in the ribs.... Halloa! Chocolate," for a bit touched
his lips and was gently pushed between them. "That reminds me. I've an
iron ration somewhere about me. No--they took my pack off when I got
crumped up." It had seemed only--decent to Franky in those days of
endless foot-slogging, to carry a pack and a Lee-Enfield and fare no
better than his men. "Frightfully obliged. But I won't take this."
This being another scrap of chocolate. "Is thy servant a Boche that he
should stodge kid's grub?"
"You're English!" The blue eyes were full of hungry worship. "Man
alive!" quavered the boyish treble, "you don't know how I've wanted to
hear an English voice again. Tell me"--he panted and was pale under his
multitudinous freckles, and the beating of the childish heart shook the
thin young frame--"the Germans haven't beaten England--and sunk our
Navy, and wiped out our Army--and killed the King, and Lord Roberts, and
the Chief Scout, and Lord Kitchener, and--and my father and mother and
everyone?"
"No!" said the wounded man, and his faint whisper was as convincing as
though the negative had been shouted with the full strength of vigorous
lungs. "Is that the kind of lie they've been pitching you? Perhaps it
does 'em good to believe it! Let 'em, if they like. It'll never be
true!"
"I knew it couldn't!" The clear treble had lost its quaver. "And yet
there were times when I was funky. _He_ seemed so awfully sure at--the
beginning! And--the Enemy never stops--rubbing it in!"
"Who is the Enemy?"
"His name is von Herrnung. And--and I must go now, for--for your sake."
The eyes flickered, and their pupils dilated to wide circles of
frightened blackness. "He might wake up--and come--and find you. And
if he found you----"
When the arteries have been almost depleted by haemorrhage, and the
strength of the body has ebbed to vanishing point, the brain is
sometimes dazzlingly clear. Thus, though the faint whisper barely
reached the ear of the other, the haggard eyes looking out of the
begrimed and unshaven face of the man lying in the blood-soaked
stretcher were alert and observant. He said reassuringly:
"He won't come just yet. Tell me more about him, and all about
yourself."
How strangely lined and pinched and puckered was the young face with its
clear red-and-white sprinkled over with brown freckles. Fine dust of
dew-beads started upon forehead and temples and cheeks, the half-opened
mouth twitched nervously, though he thrust out his under-jaw and knitted
his reddish brows in a gallant effort of self-control.
"His name is von Herrnung. He is the German Field Flight officer who
took me away from England. I wrote down the date in my Scout's
pocket-book so that I mightn't forget. It was July 18th. He was trying
Mr. Sherbrand's hawk-hoverer at Hendon. He asked me to go up with
him----"
"Great Snipe!" panted Franky weakly. "Are YOU the boy who dropped the
wallet with the Clanronald Papers and the scratched message in the North
Sea?"
The blue eyes understood. "There was a wallet," said their owner. "I
don't know what was inside, of course. But he----"
A spasm of trembling went through the slender body. He bent his head,
and blinked his eyes, and the muscles of his throat and jaw worked as
though he fought down an hysterical access of tears. And a broad shaft
of golden light, falling on the young bare head, showed how the shining
red-brown hair had been roughly clipped in ridges, leaving a
forehead-tuft oddly streaked with white. Amongst the crowds of homeless
exiles endlessly streaming along the roads of this scourged and tortured
country, or crouching amongst the wreckage of its ruined villages and
battered towns, heads even younger than this boy's had displayed the
tragic sign.
"Poor kid!" Franky muttered, recognising it as the result of
overwhelming physical shock and unnatural mental strain. "He knew what
was inside? ..."
"I don't think so! If he had known when the submarine picked us up in
the North Sea--I think he would have killed me! He would like to kill
me now, he says"--the apple in the boy's throat jerked--"because through
me he has been _degradiren_--reduced from Captain to Supernumerary
Officer Pilot--and has had his Third Class of the Red Eagle taken away!
That was done at the big Wireless Station--Nordeich, they called it----"
"Nordeich.... Of course ... in German West Friesland. Thrash along--I'm
following you. Did they Court Martial the Flying Man?" Franky
whispered; and Bawne whispered back:
"The Emperor punished him! ..."
"The Emperor, did you say? ..."
"Yes. He came to Nordeich--in--I've forgotten what they call it when
great people want to move about without red carpets and lots of fuss."
"Incognito."
"Incognito. He'd broken off his yachting-trip in Norwegian waters--and
landed at Kiel only that day. I heard men whisper it.... He was
dressed in the field-grey, like his War Minister von Falkenhayn---and
his generals of the Imperial Staff--and all the other officers and men.
But he 'stripped off the War-harness,'--that's what they called
it!--before he got into the Potsdam train."
"Go on! ... What did he look like? ... They say he has changed a lot o'
late."
"I couldn't tell. I'd only seen photos that made him look younger and
hid his short arm. But even if he hadn't sat while the others
stood--and worn the Iron Cross, Grand Class--and the Black Eagle with
diamond swords and a Crown Imperial--I'd have known it was the Emperor,
by his eyes."
"By his eyes, you say! ..."
The boy's heart throbbed visibly, the breath came in short puffs through
his nostrils, and his lips were twisted awry as he smiled. The smile
stiffened out as he nodded. "By his awful eyes! ... When they looked at
you they made you feel tired, and empty, and--queer. But when they got
angry--you were reminded of--of a tiger lurking to spring out of a cave
of ice!"
"Ah! So he got angry, did he?"
Bawne nodded.
"When I wouldn't answer the questions he asked me--he talked
English--about how the brown satchel had come unstrapped and tumbled
into the sea. And he said to an officer: 'Show him your whip!'--and he
did--and it was short-stocked and covered with leather, like a
dog-whip--with three thongs strung with little balls of lead. Man
alive! you ought to see my back. Though they only hit me once!" He
winced, and flushed, and paled. "I was a coward to squeal--though when
they asked: 'Will you tell now?' I _did_ say: 'Not to stop you from
killing me!'"
"Good egg you! Great Snipe!--if I'd been there. With a Service
Revolver--! Never mind.... Go on!"
"I forget.... Oh!--they pulled on my shirt and gave me some strong
stuff to drink. Corn brandy, I think it was--and then He got up and
came round the table and began to talk to me. He said I must not be an
obstinate boy, for in another few days there would be War. Our pitiful
little Army'd be wiped out and our Fleet sent to the bottom of the sea.
The British Isles would be _Deutsch Brittanien_--and English people who
would not swear to be good Brito-German subjects of their new Emperor
and Overlord would be instantly put to death. But if I told up about
the brown satchel I would be permitted to live, and possibly my parents
also. If I said No!--nothing would be left but to call back the officer
with the whip."
"Coaxin', wasn't he? And what did you tell him?"
"I said: 'You've only said you're going to conquer England, Sir. You
haven't done it yet!"
It was not merely the treble voice of a courageous child answering. It
was the utterance of a race untamable and indomitable. Franky could
hear the metal balls on the whip clink one against another as the loaded
thongs were shaken out.... He whispered with dry lips:
"Then----?"
"Then I don't quite know. I was sick and sleepy, and the blood was
running down my back under my shirt. If they had killed me I wouldn't
have cared much. Perhaps he saw that, for he called up von Herrnung.
He was not to be dismissed from the Field Flying Service--because of the
War that was coming!--but he was to forfeit his Order of the Red Eagle
and rank as a Supernumerary Officer Pilot. Man alive!--you should have
seen how that big man squirmed and crawled and blubbered." The young
lips curled, and the jaw thrust out contemptuously. "'Thanks!
Gratitude! ... My blood to prove devotion! ... All I ask--the service of
danger--the reconnaissance under enemy fire!' And the Emperor----"
"Kicked him, I hope!"
"No, he said: 'Supernumerary Officer Pilot von Herrnung you will now to
your Flying Headquarters return. Let it be your task to win back at the
cost of a thousand lives--if you had them--the lost esteem of your
Emperor. Take this boy with you. Make of him a decent German. It is
"up to you," as the English say.' And then the Wireless went '_S'ss!
Crackle! Pzz!_' and the telephone-bell said '_Pr'rr!_' and the room was
cleared--they said because of a Call from the Winter Palace at
Petersburg."
"And where did they take you after you left the Wireless Station? Go
on--I'd like to hear you tell!"
The boy glanced round uneasily and then mastered his apprehensions. The
grimed hands went to his stocking-top and pulled out a squat little
book. The coloured presentment of a Boy Scout adorned its soiled
leather cover, and the thumbed leaves of the diary within were pencilled
from end to end. The Odyssey of a Saxham Pup, one might have called the
story whispered into the ear of the wounded man by the boy squatting at
his side.
One had been taken by train to Bremen and thence to a place called