That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
carrying two bareheaded young gentlemen, moaned into view, chasing its
own wave-skipping, flying shadow at full stretch for the shore, came
down in a long mallard-like glide, skidding over the water as the
wild-duck does, and in a ruffle of glittering spray, continued the
home-journey in the character of a motor-boat.
Then there was a sharp squib-like crack, and from one of the anchored
hydroplanes, a rocket went up and burst in a smoke-puff that hung in a
little cloud of violet-grey upon the sunny air, and from the hangars on
the shingle under the bluff streamed figures in blue overalls or grimy
shirt-sleeves, and cheered and waved, standing ankle-deep in refluent
water, topped with creamy sheets of foam. As the Batboat with her
joyous navigators rushed spluttering to the shallow anchorage and tied
up beside the Station planes, megaphones bellowed, motor-horns tooted,
somebody banged on the ship's bell, a cornet struck up "Rule Britannia!"
very much out of tune....
"Well done, you two beggars! Oh! well done!" trumpeted Dareless,
through his hollowed hands, and turned a beaming face on Patrine to
explain that the hatless navigators of the Batboat were Lieutenants of a
Flight stationed at Antwerp, and had shared in the Air Raid on the
Zeppelin-sheds at Duesseldorf--early on the previous day.
And then a droning song had come drifting down out of the sky to the
south-eastward with a buzzing undernote in it that Patrine remembered
well. Dareless had lifted his head for a rapid upward reconnaissance,
and said with a flash of white teeth in his brown face:
"Thumbs up, Miss Saxham!--this is your particular bird!"
And Patrine had seen, small and high, and shining palely golden in the
sunlight, the shape of the biplane that carried her lover, and her heart
knocked twice in her bosom, heavily, as they knock behind the curtain
before they ring up at the Comedie Francaise. A Clery's
signalling-pistol had cracked and been answered from the Air-Station.
Mechanics in overalls had appeared upon the green. Then the buzzing had
stopped, and the second Bird of War, rising higher to escape the
backwash of light airs from the cliffs, had launched into a splendid
sweeping spiral, ending in a long glide, and alighted on the well-rolled
Station aerodrome--and Sherbrand had come home.
Surely never until the thought of Flight,--formed in the brain-cells of
Man and fertilised by the lust of Adventure,--hatched out in the Bird
that bears the Knight of To-day upon the air-path, did lover return to
his lady after a fashion so wonderful as this.
The Flying Men have always been coming. In the Book of Books you will
read of them. Ecclesiasticus, the Preacher, foretold of the day when a
Bird of the Air should carry the Voice, and That Which Hath Wings should
tell the matter; and how these Winged ones rush and roar through the
prophetic pages of Ezekiel and Daniel, you have but to open them to
learn. Their shapes like locusts, their armoured bodies with great-eyed
headpieces "like those of horses prepared unto battle," the noise made
by their wings in flight "like the noise of chariots and horses running
to battle," the wheels beneath their wings, the human faces appertaining
to them, the inward fire that issues from them in scorching
vapours,--are described with fiery eloquence in the Apocalypse of the
Apostle of St. John, when the Fifth Angel sounds the Trumpet, and the
King whose name is Exterminans, the Destroyer, reaches the culminating
point of his terrific reign upon earth.
Flight makes the world no more joyful, being mainly used for purposes of
destruction, but nothing can rob the Flying Man of his shining gloriole
of Romance. The boy who was building toy aeroplanes of card and elastic
a few years back has rediscovered the Flying Dragon of the Cretaceous
period, broken and tamed the winged monster into a War steed, and
thundered down the forgotten roads of the Pterodactyl and the Rukh, to
reap shining honours upon the battlefields of the mutable Air. And if
the girl who chaffed the boy of old worships him to-day as St. George,
Sir Lancelot, Sir Galahad, and Le Bon Sieur de Bayard rolled into one,
who shall blame her? Not I, for one!
In the instant of reunion, when the tall brown figure came swinging to
meet her, and the strong hard hands gripped her own, Patrine loved him
more than ever. Sherbrand's was not a romantic greeting, but it
thrilled her nevertheless.
"They've asked us to lunch here, but it's ready at the Cottage. Shall
we accept? It's for you to decide."
His tone had indicated his keen desire for the _tete-a-tete_ in
preference. Disappointment had shadowed his clear eyes when Patrine had
voted for luncheon at the Air Station, inwardly longing to be alone with
him--to be alone.
And yet, despite the longing, the haunting sense of a sword of Fate
hanging over her, Patrine found the Wardroom lunch a jolly banquet.
They were so young, those sunburnt faces, laughing about the
plainly-furnished board. The Wing-Commander in charge of the Station
proved to be something under thirty. To Patrine, occupying the place of
honour on his right hand, he did the honours like a veteran. One of the
navigators of the Batboat sat upon her other side, and Sherbrand was her
_vis-a-vis_.
Sherbrand was altered. She knew him older, harder, sterner.... Thinner
to the verge of haggardness, with a deep vertical furrow graved between
the thick eyebrows that made a bar of blonde fairness against the red of
his deeply-burned skin. He had gone away a splendid youth. Now he
returned with two silvery-yellow stars on the cuffs and shoulder-straps
of his khaki tunic, a man seasoned and tempered as a bar of steel in the
furnace-blast of War.
The pleasant meal ended, and the jolly party broke up. Their hosts
accompanied them to the gate of the Station enclosure, and the warmth
and heartiness of Naval tradition had been in the farewells that had
sped the departing guests upon their way:
"_Au revoir_! All happiness!"
"So-long! We'll look after the 'plane all right!"
"_Adios! Buenas noches!_"
"_Sayonara!_"
"_Sieda!_"
"Good-bye and good luck! Now all together.... Hip--hip--" and a rousing
British cheer.
*CHAPTER LXV*
*GOOD-BYE, DEAR LOVE, GOOD-BYE!*
They had looked back to smile and wave their thanks, and an aged
tennis-shoe, scientifically hurled by Dareless, had knocked the cap out
of Sherbrand's upraised hand, and raised a cloud of chalky dust from the
surface of the sunken road. Under cover of this they had crossed the
road and climbed a slope together and found themselves standing in
heavenly loneliness, with the sea beside them and their feet upon the
thymy grasses blotted by the short shadows of their tall figures, under
the almost vertical sun.
"Look!" Sherbrand had said, pointing to a whitewashed, red-tiled cottage
cuddled in a hollow some quarter of a mile distant, girt with a gay
frivolous little garden full of bachelor's buttons and sunflowers,
lavender bushes and nasturtiums yellow and red. He slipped his hand
within her arm and pressed it, whispering: "There's our Eden--and my
dream has come true!"
Her heart choked her. They moved on together shoulder to shoulder, her
elbow resting in the bend of his strong arm, and her hand lying in his.
The air they breathed was sweet with heady, nameless fragrance, the
burning golden light that haloed them seemed the effluence of their
love. Anguish and rapture mingled in the chalice of the perfect hour for
Patrine. Nothing but rapture was in the draught for Sherbrand, though a
faint fold showed between his eyebrows as he said suddenly:
"Hang it! I've forgotten to ask the Station fellows to give me a
night's shakedown. However, there's a decent hotel in Seasheere. My
bag is still in the machine, by the way.... Did you send someone on to
the cottage with your traps?"
"I----"
She began to falter. It was coming.... But his eagerness delayed the
moment of revelation. The track they followed dipped down and they
found themselves in a grassy basin. The turf cupped up on every side
and they were alone, lidded by the blazing turquoise sky.
At the bottom of the green nest he stopped, and next moment his embrace
enveloped her. She forgot, as an answering flame burned in her blood,
all the things that she had meant to say. "I'll have my hour," shot
through her whirling brain, "I must have something of him to keep in
remembrance. He has never loved me--nor I him--so passionately as now.
Oh, my God!"
He released her with a happy sigh, and they sat down on the shadowed
side of their green nest, a deep dimple in the cheek of the sunny,
smiling Earth, and looked in each other's eyes. He said, as she took
off her hat and threw it aside and turned her unveiled, unshadowed face
back to his:
"Your dear cheeks are thinner, I fancy, Pat. Have you been worrying
much about me?"
She nodded, thinking of her sleepless nights passed after reading his
few letters, or when his letters had failed to come.
"Pretty badly--in the days of the Retreat from Mons. You piloted that
French officer over the Channel and--whiff!--you vanished. What has
become of him?"
"Wing Commandant Raymond? He's riding the storm and directing the
whirlwind somewhere on the French Front. I got my orders to join the
R.F.C.-unit acting with a rearguard battery of the Second Army Corps as
soon as I'd dumped him. As for the work with the battery, it was always
the same thing. We flew out against von Kluck's advance, spotting their
gun-emplacements and getting the range for our gunners. And under us a
dark-brown river with five branches rolled South. And that was the
Retreat."
His arm was round her, her cheek was pressed to his, her bosom heaved
against him. She turned her lips to his in a quick kiss, and whispered:
"And when you came down out of your sky 'like pigeons homing at
nightfall'--that's a sentence in one of your letters--d'you recognise
it?--the river went on rolling still?"
"Just the same, without a break. And what a--welter. Remnants of crack
infantry brigades tangled with the rags of cavalry squadrons--grimy,
hairy, ragged chimney-sweeps with bandaged feet and empty bellies, and
blackened tongues hanging out, and blind, blank, staring eyes....
Imagine all the toy soldier outfits in the kiddy-shops of Regent Street
emptied into the gutters and you'll get an idea of what the thing was
like.... And Transport and Supply-columns jumbled with bits of R.G.A.
batteries and R.F.A.--three dying horses to a howitzer, and one gunner
left out of six! Bands of refugees and troops of stragglers. Lunatics
led along howling and gibbering. Lorries, carts, and motor-vans crammed
with swollen-footed cripples--cheek by jowl with bloody spectres
evacuated from Field Hospitals that were reddening the sky with their
burning in the rear. A day-and-nightmare to haunt one for ever if the
end had been different--" He caught his breath. "But when I remember
that we straightened the muddle--brought Order out of Chaos--turned on
the Germans and bit to the bone--I pray that the memory may stay with me
always, so that I may teach your sons and mine what it means to be
Englishmen!"
"Oh, Alan! My poor boy! ..." She caught him in her arms with sudden
passion, strained him to her and then freed herself from him, and moved
away, signing to him that he must not approach. "What you hope for can
never be! I'd have told you this before if I'd been decent, but I wanted
your kisses--I was hungry for the touch of you--and the sound of your
voice in my ears after all these weeks and weeks----"
"Then why do you say it can never be--and tell me in the same breath