That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
tempt the yellow-and-black marauders to the board. And yet from the
soup to the _entremets_, Franky listened in dour and smileless silence,
unable to conjure up a grin at the sharpest of the Goblin's witticisms,
or swell the guffaw that invariably followed the naughtiest of her
_double-entendres_.
"Off colour, what? ..." his crony Courtley queried in a sympathetic
undertone, catching a glimpse of Franky's cheerless countenance behind
the bare, convulsed back and snowy heaving shoulders of Lady Beauvayse,
who occupied the intervening chair.
"Putridly off colour.... Walked in the Bois, and got a touch of the
sun, I fancy!" Franky whispered back too loudly, drawing upon himself
the Goblin's _equivoque_:
"The sun or the daughter, did you say, Lord Norwater? Dear me!" the
Goblin shrilled; "you're actually blushing! You've revived a long-lost
Early Victorian art."
"Was blushing really an art with the ladies of that dim and distant
era?" asked the friendly Brayham, not in the least comprehending
Franky's discomfiture, yet desirous of diverting the Goblin's glittering
scrutiny from her victim's scarlet face.
"It was the art that concealed Heart--or assumed it!" Lady Wathe
retorted, with a peal of elfish laughter, turning her tight-skinned,
large-eyed, wide-mouthed ugliness upon the speaker, and nodding her
little round head until the huge and perfectly matched diamonds of the
triple-rayed tiara that crowned her scanty henna-dyed tresses flashed
blinding sparks of violet and red and emerald splendour in the
mellow-toned radiance of the electric lights.
The Goblin had meant nothing, Franky assured himself, as the angry blood
stopped humming in his ears, and his complexion regained its normal
shade. The bad pun that had bowled him over had possibly been uttered
without malicious intent.... Yet Lady Wathe rented a gorgeous suite
upon the floor below the Norwater apartments, and one of her three
lady's-maids might have been pumping Pauline.... What was she saying?
... Why was everybody cackling? ...
The Goblin was launched upon a characteristic story. Its
_denouement_--worked up with skill and related with point--evoked peal
upon peal of laughter from the guests at Brayham's table, with the sole
exception of Franky, whom the anecdote found sulky and left glum. He
said to himself that if Lady Beauvayse, _nee_ Miss Sadie J. Sculpin of
New York, sole child and heiress of a Yankee who had made millions out
of Chewing Gum, chose to forget her position as the wife of a British
Peer, and mother of his children, by Jove! and scream at such nastiness,
it was her look-out. If the big red-blond man who sat on Franky's right
shook with amusement, as he recapitulated the chief points of the story
for the benefit of the girl who sat next him, it was his affair. But
that the Saxham, an unmarried girl, who oughtn't to see the bearings of
such a tale, should openly revel in its saltness, made Franky feel
sick--on this particular night.
He realised that he detested the Saxham girl, one of Margot's chosen
Club intimates, more fervently than even Tota Stannus or Joan Delabrand;
more thoroughly than Rhona Helvellyn; only little less heartily than he
hated Cynthia Charterhouse. Big, bold, galumphing, provocative--in
fact, so much IT that you couldn't overlook her--he found her more
unpleasantly attractive than usual, in a bodice that was no more than a
fold of shimmering orange stuff above the waist--tossing the _panache_
of ospreys that startlingly crowned her, offering up her _persistant_
illusion perfumes for the delectation of the appreciative male.
Only look at her, ready to climb into her neighbour's pocket. Leaning
her round white elbows on the guipure table-cloth, half-shutting those
long greeny-brown Egyptian eyes of her, wreathing her long thick white
neck to send a daring challenge into the face of the laughing man. A
big man, bright red-haired, blue-eyed, and broad-chested, showing every
shining tooth in his handsome grinning head....
"She's _screaming_, isn't she, dear Lady Beau?" Thus the Saxham to her
employer, friend, and ally, across the silver bowls of Rayon d'Or roses,
her naked shoulder brushing the coat-sleeve of her neighbour, the big
rufous man. And Lady Beau gushed back:
"In marvellous form to-night.... Don't you think so, Count? Do agree
with us!" and the big man agreed, with the accent of the German
Fatherland:
"She is _kolossal_.... _Wunderlich_! ..."
"Who's the German next me--big beggar Lady Beau and Miss Saxham are
gushing over?" Franky presently telegraphed to Courtley behind the
charming American's accommodating back. And Courtley signalled in
reply:
"Von Herrnung. German Count of sorts--Engineer and Flieger officer.
Son of an Imperial Councillor, and cousin to Princess Willy of Kiekower
Oestern--really rather an interestin' beast in his way. Made a one-stop
flight to Paris from Hanover in April, with an Albatros biplane.
Previously won an event in the Prinz Heinrich Circuit Competition." He
added: "We can't decently blink their progress in military aviation.
It's one o' them there fax which the brass-hats at the War Office
pretend to regard as all my eye. Yet they know the Fatherland--or if
they don't they oughter! Good-lookin' chap this. Not over thirty, I
should guess him. Always dodging in and out of the German Embassy. The
Goblin frightful nuts on him.... Goin' to steer him through the next
London Season--suppose he's lookin' out for a moneyed wife!"
"Hope he gets her!" Franky mentally commented. But he looked with new
interest at his big blond German neighbour, mentally calculating that
with all that bone, brawn, and muscle, von Herrnung couldn't tip the
scale at less than sixteen stone.
Small-boned himself and of stature not above the medium, Franky
appreciated height and size in other men. And von Herrnung was
undeniably a son of Anak. The noiseless, demure waiters who paused
beside his chair to refill his glass or offer him dishes were dwarfed by
his seated presence to the proportions of little boys.
Once, when there was a momentary bustle at the principal entrance to the
now crowded restaurant, and a party of men, ceremoniously ushered by M.
Spitz in person, passed up the central gangway between the rows of
glittering tables, shielded by glass-panelled screens framed in oxidised
silver, and crowded now with gossiping, laughing, gobbling patrons--men
and women of varied nationalities, representing the elite of the
fashionable world, von Herrnung rose and remained imperturbably standing
at the salute, his eyes set and fixed, his head turned rigidly towards
the personage, semi-bald, stout, with a prominent under jaw and a hard
official stare rendered glassier by a frameless square monocle, and
showing beneath the open front of a loose military mantle a star upon
the left side of his evening dress-coat, and the glitter of an Order
suspended from a yellow riband about his thick bull-neck.
"The German Ambassador, Baron von Giesnau," Lady Wathe returned to a
question from Lady Beauvayse, as the portly official figure creaked by,
leaving a whiff of choice cigars and a taint of _parfum tres
persistant_, lifting three fingers of a white-gloved hand in
acknowledgment of his countryman's salute, and von Herrnung unstiffened
and dropped back into his chair. "No! ... I'm not sure where the
Emperor is...." She added, with one of her laughs and a shrug of her
thin vivacious shoulders: "Ask Count von Herrnung--he's sure to know!"
"_Gnaedige Graefin_," von Herrnung returned when interrogated, "I am not
able to answer your question." He shrugged his broad shoulders and
showed his white teeth. "_Unser Kaiser_ is--who shall say where? At the
Hof ... possibly at Homburg.... Stop! ... Now I remember! _Seine
Majestaet_ is at Kiel...." He continued, arranging with a big white
hand displaying a preposterously long thumb-nail a corner of his
glittering, tightly rolled moustache: "At Kiel ... _ach_, yes! he has
been there since the 25th of June. Entertaining the British and
American Ambassadors, visiting the Commander-in-Chief of your British
Squadron, superintending the armament of one of our own new
battle-cruisers,--seeing put into her those great big Krupp guns that
are to sink your super-Dreadnoughts by-and-by!"
The deliberately-uttered words of the last sentence dropped into a
little pool of chilly silence. He had spoken with perfect gravity, and
the Englishmen who heard him stared before they grinned. Then the women
shrieked in ecstasies of amusement--the Goblin's laugh overtopping all.
"For he hates us! ... You can't think how he hates us! ..." she crowed,
writhing her lean little throat, clasped by seven rows of shimmering
stones, wagging her Kobold's head, crowned by its diadem of
multi-coloured fire. "Tell us how you hate us, Tido! ... Do--pray do!"
"I hate you, _ach_ yes! ... All German officers are like
that--particularly the officers of our Field Flying Service," gravely
corroborated von Herrnung. "We have many pleasant acquaintanceships
with men and women of British nationality, but your race--the
Anglo-Saxon branch of the great Teutonic oak-tree, it is natural that we
should hate! For that Germany must expand upon the west and north-west
as well as south and east, or suffocate, is certain. She must wield the
trident of Sea Power; she must transform the map of Europe. She must
exploit and disseminate German trade and German Kultur; therefore, as
the British, more than any other nation, stands in the way of German
development, we look forward to the Day when we shall exterminate you
and take our right position as masters of the world!"
The women screamed anew at this. The men were now laughing in good
earnest. Franky found it impossible to restrain the convulsions that
shook him in his chair. Purple-faced Brayham tried to speak, but broke
down wheezing and spluttering. The Goblin shrilled:
"Tell them, Tido.... Please tell them! ... Do--ha! ha! tell them how
you're spoiling for a scrimmage with us! Show them your thumb-nail,
pray do!"
Thus adjured, the big German solemnly extended his left hand for general
inspection. The pointed, carefully-manicured thumb-nail was at least
two inches long. Its owner said with perfect gravity:
"This is the badge of a Society of England-haters, chiefly Prussian
military officers, young men of noble birth, bound by an oath of blood.
This mark we carry to distinguish us. It is a sign of our dedication, to
remind us of the purpose for which we are set apart." He added: "Count
Zeppelin himself set the fashion of the uncut thumb-nail. It will be
cut when the Day comes, and it has been dipped in blood!"
"In blood--how beastly!" said the Saxham girl, curling the corners of
her wide red mouth contemptuously. "What a horrid crowd your noble
young Prussian officers must be! And when is the dipping to come off?"
Her voice was deep and resonant as a masculine baritone, and of so
carrying a quality that Franky started as though the words had been
spoken at his ear.
"_Gnaedige Fraeulein_," von Herrnung answered, "I have already told you.
When the Day comes for which we are preparing. When the great German
nation shall abandon Christianity--cast off the rusty fetters of
Morality and Virtue--call on the Ancient God of Battles--and beat out
the iron sceptre of World Power with sword-blows upon the anvil of War."
"When we're all to be exterminated, he means!" Lady Wathe gasped behind
her filmy handkerchief. "Tido, you're too absolutely screaming! Do say
why your noble young Prussians keep us waiting? ..." And von Herrnung
answered composedly:
"Because we are not yet ready. We shall not be perfectly ready before
the spring of 1916."