That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
old wax, the discoloured stains and the hair and grime upon it, had
never been handsome even in health. But thrown back and tilted upwards,
with the rosy glow of the setting sun touching the high brow, and violet
shadows framing the sealed eyelids and close-shut mouth, it did not lack
the quality of nobility. There was something knightly about the still
form.
He revived to pain and loneliness and burning thirst, the squalor and
abomination of desolation, the louder, nearer thudding of the German
drum-fire, and the dogged reply of the unweakening British guns. He
might have deemed the events that had taken place illusions born of
weakness and fever, but for the testimony of the looking-glass that hung
away upon the wall. There was the familiar vista of the Market Square,
with the charred ruins of Town Hall and Clock Tower, yet sending up thin
columns of bluish smoke into the radiant air. You could even make out a
corner of the great stack of stiffened, blackening bodies. Nothing was
wanting but that the Taube should still be resting on the cobblestones
like a drowsy white vampire-bat glutted with human blood.
But the Taube was not there. From high overhead the buzzing note of the
hoverer came down to Franky. He could see through the rents in the
penthouse of broken flooring the white, winged shape hanging poised
overhead. He even fancied he could descry the helmeted, goggled head of
von Herrnung peering over the bulwarks of the bird-body, the jut of his
elbow and the pear-shaped wire cages in which the bombs hung ready to
his hand.
The thought of Margot and the child was an exquisite agony. The thirst
for life, delectable life, revived in Franky ragingly. In dreadful
expectation of the deafening crash, and the rending pang, and the
burning bite of the greenish flame, the haggard eyes were straining
upwards, when the terror went out of them, and their lids flickered
down.... Let the fellow do his worst. Where was the good of hating?
Christ had prayed for His murderers when they nailed Him on the Tree.
The numb hand feebly made the Sacred Sign, and the tension passed with
the terror.... There was a dull boom high overhead, and some heavy
objects fell in a neighbouring backyard. Little bits of metal rattled
on Franky's plank penthouse, and some warm drops pattered on Franky's
face and wetted the hand that lay upon his breast. Not rain, but
something sticky and thick, with a sickly, well-known odour. He lifted
the hand. Oh, horrible! The heavens were raining blood.
Too weak to even guess at what had happened, he fell again into a
stupor. The hollowed chest heaved at longer intervals beneath the First
Aid bandaging over which had been thrown the khaki coat. Long cold
breaths expired through the panting nostrils, the eyes showed a glassy
line of white between the parted lids. He was dreaming....
Dreaming of being borne along in a shadowy boat under starless skies,
through clear lucent darkness, over another darkness unfathomable, and
yet diamond-clear. Perhaps no more water than the atmosphere above it
was air, both possibly, elements unknown.... The boat crowded with
seated shapes, three of them feminine.... A tall, black-hooded,
black-mantled figure in the sternway seemed to impel the vessel with a
single oar.
"Is this stuff water?"
The quiet voice of a man seated beside Franky had asked the question.
Franky slipped his hand over the boat's low side and withdrew it
shining, but not dripping, thinking:
"It is and it isn't. Fairly odd! Wonder where we're bound for? That
fellow sculling.... Reminds me of old Charon, in the Sixth AEneid, when
I swotted Virgil at School."
"Me too!" Thought seemed to pass current as speech, for though Franky
had not voiced his reflection, the tall man who sat next him had
answered instantly:
"But if this is the Ninefold--what about the '_cold and venomous waters,
consuming iron and breaking the rarest vessels_.'" The speaker dipped
his hand over the side and brought it up all shining but not dripping,
and touched his lips with it, and went on, smiling: "Besides, if you and
I are alive, where are our golden boughs, and if we're dead, where are
our oboli? We ought to have 'em! It wouldn't be good form not!"
"Why, you're Braythwayte of Ours! How is it I didn't know you? Why did
I suppose--" Franky broke off, for Braythwayte's very recent exit from
the stage of life had been performed after a highly coloured fashion,
when the Germans had showered heavy shells of high explosive upon the
little Belgian town. "That fellow sculling," he said to cover the
slight embarrassment. "Somehow I fancy I've seen him before."
"Ah! Now I recollect." Braythwayte was answering the thought of the
previous moment. "I did get crumped up pretty badly. Should have come
off lots worse hadn't it been for Cruse. He threw himself in front of
me when the shell dropped so near us." He spoke of the Sergeant-Major
of his Company who had been killed at the same moment. "Don't you
recognise him? Cruse is the man who's sculling. I caught a glimpse of
his face just now--it can be nobody but Cruse."
"Beggin' yer pard'n, Sorr." The soft South Irish brogue sounded more
apologetic than contradictory. The thick, sturdy figure of the speaker,
uncertainly descried in the clear obscurity, leaned anxiously over from
the opposite seat. "'Tis Father Walsh--may Those Above reward him for an
ould, bould gentleman!--that kem crawlin' out on his four bones to the
Advanced threnches at a place they did be callin' La Bossy or
suchlike--to give Holy Absolution to meself and Hanlon an' two other
boys av' the Loyal Irish Rifles that wor' in a bad way. Wouldn't I
swear to his skin on a gate, or the bend of his beak anywhere"--the
voice hesitated--"barrin' for the mimmory I have that Thim Wans was
afther pluggin' him through the head--and himself just layin' the
Blessed Sacrament on me tongue!"
"Beg pardon." A woman's voice joined in the conversation. "Sorry to
interrupt, but I know him, really. It isn't the Surgeon-Major--or
Father Anybody!" Franky recognised in the clear obscurity the flowing
white head-dress and grey Red-Cross badged cape of an Army Nursing
Sister, as she went on: "It's just our Civil Surgical Specialist--who
died of double pneumonia (septic) at the Harfleur Military Hospital.
Had a touch of influenza--and would get out of bed to operate on one of
the Sisters--a sudden case of appendix trouble with typhoid thrown in.
Oh, yes! the operation was successful, but the Sister didn't recover.
Still, the C.S.S. gave his life for hers all the same!"
"Good egg, him! But are you quite sure there's no mistake with regard
to our friend there?" Franky nodded towards the tall, black-hooded,
black-mantled figure plying the oar, upright in the stern. "Because
just now I caught a glimpse of his face, and I could have sworn it was
my grandfather--by a long sight the finest man I've ever come across!
He dived over the yacht's side and saved my life when I was drowning.
It was the Cowes Season of 1894. I was a cheeky nipper of eight--and he
was seventy-one. And the chill and the excitement brought on a stroke or
something. He was dead in his cabin-berth next morning, when his man
went in with the mail."
"Oh, you funnies!" This with a clear little trill of laughter in the
voice of a small girl--Franky could see her bright eyes dancing as she
peeped at him from her niche between the Army Nurse and the small,
black-habited elderly figure of a Sister of Charity in a deep starched
_guimpe_ and wide-flanged cornette. "As if it could be anybody but my
Dada--who pulled the soldiers out of the train that was all smashed up
and burning! When me and Mummy----"
"_Taisez vous donc, Raymonde!_" whispered the nun reprovingly. "It is
not _convenable_ that _petites demoiselles_ should interrupt their
elders thus. Remember where you are, and in what Presence!"
"Please don't scold her!" coaxed Franky, the devout lover of children.
The nun smiled, meeting his entreating eyes. He smiled back and went
on: "Right or wrong--we seem all agreed that our friend in the stern is
a near relation--or a close acquaintance of nearly every one of us. In
every case a supreme benefactor----"
"Surely, monsieur!" she gave back in a hushed tone. "But surely,
monsieur! The Helper--the Benefactor of us all!"
As the keel grated on unseen bottom, she folded her hands with a
beautiful devoutness, and sank upon her knees, drawing with her the
child. The man of the Loyal Irish followed her example. Franky found
himself kneeling with the others--and as the boat's prow ploughed into
sand or shingle, and the Ferryman, shipping his oar, moved shorewards
with a shepherding gesture, the voyagers rose with a thrill of
expectancy, and followed with one accord.
He stepped ashore--dropping the great black mantle--turned and faced
them, spreading out His Arms. Beauty Divine, glory unspeakable----
*CHAPTER LXVII*
*THE QUESTION*
"Have I been honest?" Patrine asked herself over and over, kneeling by
the open window, staring into the darkness. "Have I been just towards
the man who never was a friend even when he played the lover? Did not
my own attitude of cynical curiosity towards secret, hidden things, bias
his line of conduct towards me? Might not even von Herrnung have
respected a girl who showed no inclination to flutter moth-like, about
the flaming torch of Sin? No! he would not. But I could have saved
myself even from scorching--I, who approached the flame too closely, and
shall carry the scars of my burning to the grave."
Drip, drip, drip! Water, oozing from the box that stood upon the table,
was dropping on the carpet with the small, insistent sound.... At the
west end of the Catholic Church where Patrine had told her story to a
priest in the Confessional there was a great black Crucifix, bearing a
white thorn-crowned Figure gashed with gory-seeming wounds. She had
fancied that the blood from them dripped down upon the pavement as she
had sat staring at the High Altar, and wondering whether it were true
that wilful sin committed by men and women for whose salvation Christ
had bled and died might not cause Him suffering even now?
She had been willing to sin for Sherbrand, and said so in her hour of
madness. Yet the renunciation of her lover as a husband had been an act
of the purest love. Perhaps God would overlook the one thing for the
sake of the other? Perhaps He had really spoken by the mouth of that old
priest whose tears had dropped upon his withered hands....
Drip, drip, drip! Patrine began to suspect the source whence the sound
proceeded. The people who had packed the roses--they must be roses--had
wetted the cotton-wool too heavily, the fools! The inlaid table and the
carpet would suffer if the wet were not mopped up. One ought to ring
for Mrs. Keyse or Janey, or better still, see to it oneself.
She half-rose with this intention, then sank down again nervelessly. It
was half-past ten. The October night leaned close over London, Harley
Street was muffled in velvet darkness. The veiled gleam of electric
lights showed at its junction with Cavendish Square. The rumble of the
tube train came from Portland Place, the faint shriek of the Northern
Express sounded from Euston. A Brocken Hunt of motor-buses screeched
and clanked up the Marylebone Road and faded into distance. The rumble
and roar of Oxford Street showed signs of diminution. It was possible
to hear stray sentences spoken by people passing upon the pavement
below.
"I don't care!" This from the shorter of two female figures that had
halted before the house. The edge of light-coloured skirt showing below