That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
woman in the Navy blue felt hat with the well-known V.A.D. ribbon, and
the long blue serge coat with the Red Cross shield-badge on the left
breast, seemed used to travelling alone in War-time. She had secured a
dry chair, set in the shelter of the after-deck-saloon, and a lifebelt
as stipulated by the authorities, and tucked herself in her
travelling-rug with her suit-case under her feet before the lights went
out. Thus she had remained throughout the passage, with her dark eyes
looking seawards, as deaf to occasional bursts of uproarious song from a
draft of returning Blighties packed on the lower-deck, as to the siren's
raucous shrieks.
Courteous fellow-passengers, chiefly British and Belgian officers
returning from leave, would have been ready enough to have chatted with
the young woman who was going to the Front. Such attentions as they
offered her she accepted frankly. One got her tea and sandwiches,
another offered chocolate, another a foot-warmer. Yet another insisted
on lending her an unnecessary extra rug. They pointed out the hovering
Fleet hydroplanes, and the diligently-scouting searchlights of the
destroyers guarding the sea-way, and the Hull-bound Dutch liner whose
neutrality was proclaimed in illuminated side-letters, blazing like a
sea-Alhambra upon the east horizon, and the Hospital ship that passed
close, coming from Boulogne laden with wounded, the huge Red Cross upon
her flank picked out with blazing green lights.
One and all united in assuring the wearer of the V.A.D. uniform that
there was no danger. Though when the red and green eyes on the ends of
the East and West jetties winked into sight over the coal-black shining
water, her fellow-passengers congratulated Patrine as heartily as though
some peril had been escaped.
"Nothing more doing, Pinkums, old thing!" said an experienced youngster
of twenty to a susceptible senior whom Patrine's unprotected condition
had roused to a strong sense of responsibility. "She's got enough
passes from British and French Headquarters to make a poker-hand. I saw
her showin' 'em to the authorities at Folkestone. Besides, have heart,
there's a Red Tab here to meet her. We'd better hence it before we're
snubbed."
And they saluted, and clattered down the crowded gangway, grabbing their
valises and buttoning up their British warms, and hurried away to get
into trench-kit, webbings, and waders, and swell the crowd in the
railway-station--waiting to go up to the Front and carry on with the
hourly, momentary game of touch-and-go with Death.
While Patrine looked eagerly about her, listening to the hum of the vast
human beehive. This was not the big rambling, old-fashioned French
seaport one had known so well before the War. Under sky-blind
arc-lights and red, green, and white lamps, every form of activity
imaginable in connection with the running of that now huge and
complicated machine, the British Field Army, seemed even at this hour to
be in full swing. The rumble of steam-cranes and the roar of dynamos,
the panting of pneumatic hold-dischargers, the clank of couplings, and
the shrieks of locomotives mingled with the tinny voices of gramophones
from the recreation-rooms at the great packed barracks and crowded
camps, and the sounds of song and laughter and applause from music-halls
and picture-palaces.
"Yes, it goes on most of the time," said the Red Tab who had come to
meet Patrine, an officer upon the Staff of the Commandant of a
Headquarters not far from--a certain place where Miss Saxham wished to
go. "The Army's got to be rationed and equipped and horsed and foraged,
and timbered and coaled and petroled and munitioned, as well as cobbled
and engineered and patched and tinkered and nursed--don't you follow me?
And these Base Ports are jolly useful. Nobody goes to bed much, I
fancy. Perhaps they'll make up the sleep they've lost by-and-by, after
the War."
"What-ho, Nubbins! Back from the Old Shop? Sorry!--didn't happen to
see you weren't alone!"
The station had vomited a flood of khaki, tumbling down the half-lit
quays to take later boats by storm. A tall, lanky officer of Gunners
had hailed Red Tab effusively; then, seeing him to be engaged with a
lady, hurried on with apologies and a salute for Patrine.
"Don't mind me! Do call back your friend," she urged. "He seemed so
glad to see you."
"Thanks much. If you don't mind. Whewip! Whewip!"
And the other, recalled by a shrill whistle, wheeled and came back upon
his stride, to grasp the offered hand. Whereupon, ensued the following
strictly private duologue:
"How goes the Battery?"
"First class. And your crowd?"
"Crawling along as per, usual. Congrats on the Oudstyde affair!"
"Thanks frightfully! But the whole thing was a bit of a fluke--everyone
knows that. _They_ had thrown down a gas-attack and the wind went
about-face. So we stayed where we were and shelled them through their
chlorine. Then they got their Reserves up and came on in lumps--the old
Zulu formation--and Pyers and his Engineers got to work with the"--the
speaker's voice dropped to an undertone--"what Pyers calls the
'Piffbozzler.'"
"The rose by any other name----" quoted Red Tab, and went on: "I'd have
given a tenner to have been there!--and as for old Clanronald--I wonder
if he got leave from--wherever he is--to see the stunt that day?"
Said the Gunner:
"If he did--and had such a thing as a stomach about him, he must have
simply--vomited! Pyers says he felt like the Angel with the Flaming
Sword--when he didn't feel like an Indian jeweller with a
blowpipe--frizzling a column of white ants marching over the floor.
You've seen how the things come on and on----"
"Yahgh!" remarked Red Tab expressively.
"But--just for once--we didn't happen to be on the frizzled side. The
C. in C. has laughed to the verge of hysterics over a leader in the
Berlin _Lokal Anzeiger_, with reference to the realised dream of the
'homicidal maniac' Clanronald. 'A deplorable example of the perversion
of _Die Wissenschaft_ at the murderous hands of English military
chemists,' they called it. Pretty neat from Boches who've been pumping
burning paraffin into our trenches, and suffocating platoons of men with
asphyxiating gases, ever since May."
"And particularly appropriate from people who bribed a crack Professor
of Literature to engage as librarian at Gwyll Castle--set the Library
Wing on fire and steal the portfolio with the plans of the 'homicidal
maniac' three weeks before the War--when Prinz Heinrich and old Moltke
were stopping in London. They'd promised their agent twelve million
marks if he succeeded. Wonder what he got from them when the plot
fizzled out? Well, so-long! Any message for Edith?'
"Tell her you saw me topping, and remember me to your wife!"
And they gripped hands and parted, and Red Tab hurried back to the tall
young woman waiting on the flagstones under a blue shaded arc-lamp,
saying:
"Good of you not to mind. But a shame to keep you waiting. No--we go
out at this gate. I've got a car waiting. More cushy than a crowded
railway-carriage--unless you'd have preferred going by train?"
The grey landaulette waiting in the side-street presented no more
unusual feature than unusually heavy armoured tyres, and a guard of
razor-edged steel bars protecting the front seat.
"In case of barbed wire--strung across country roads," explained Red
Tab. "One runs a chance of getting decapitated--travelling fast at
night--or in foggy weather--without a jigger of this sort. Let me stick
this cushion at your back and tuck the rugs about you. There's a
Thermos in the pocket with hot coffee--and sandwiches in a box. Don't
restrain your appyloose if you feel at all hungry! The grub was put in
specially for you. No: you won't hear the guns yet, except at
intervals, and rather faintly. Fact--I've heard 'em in the South of
England more distinctly than one does here! But at St. O--,
twenty-eight miles from the Front--they're loud enough at times--though
there's nothing much doing. Things have been as dull as ditch-water and
none of us'll be sorry when the Boches get a move on again. No--thanks,
I'm not coming inside! Responsible for your safety. Advise you to tuck
up and go to by-by!"
The car settled into its speed when the ups and downs of the old town
had been left behind, and the belated activities of the Base Port had
died into a distant hum. It slackened pace when the blaze of its
headlights showed long black columns of laden motor-lorries upon the
wintry roads ahead of it--or horse-drawn transport waggons--or droves of
animals, the steam of whose breath and shaggy hides hung over them in a
cloud--or bodies of men in heavy marching order--French and British
soldiers wearing the new steel headpiece,--shaped after the fashion of
Mambrino's helmet, like a basin turned upside down.
And sometimes there were the halts at barriers or patrol-posts near
towns or villages, where the light of swung lanterns reddened the
moustached faces of gendarmes of Chasseurs. But usually when Patrine
cleared a space upon the misty window-glass, the snow-covered landscape
would be flying past under the fitful moonlight, with the elongated
shadow of the grey Staff car galloping beside it like a demon dog.
Midnight was striking from an ancient church-tower when, passing the
guarded barriers of a town of old-world houses, and stopping in a street
running from a Place bathed in frosty moonlight, and dominated by a vast
cathedral, Red Tab, with icicles on his clipped moustache and fur
collar, got down and tapped upon the rimy glass.
"Sorry to wake you up, Miss Saxham!" he said, opening the door as
Patrine sat up, straightened the dented brim of her hat and blinked
denial of her slumberousness, "but here's the end of your journey. This
is the Ursuline Convent of St. O--, where we've arranged for you to
billet to-night. The Superioress is a frightfully hospitable old lady,
and my uncle--I mean Sir Roland--thought you'd be more cushy with the
Sisters than at a common hotel!"
"Sir Roland is always kind. But you, Captain Smyth-Howell?" She looked
out at her red-tabbed escort with compunction as he tugged at the chain
of a clanging bell, and beat his mittened hands together, stamping upon
the pavement to warm his frozen feet.
"Me? Oh, I'm pushing on to Divisional Headquarters--twenty-five miles
from this place and five miles north of the Belgian frontier. You'll be
sent on to Pophereele in the morning, first thing. The French Chaplain
of the Red Cross Hospital there is staying for the night with the Bishop
at the Palace here. A tremendously agreeable old bird the Chaplain--and
a Monsignore of the Vatican. I've met him--and he said he'd be
delighted to look after you. Don't get down--it's frightfully
slippery!"
But the tall, womanly figure was already standing beside him on the
snowy cobblestones, tilting a round white chin towards the sky, and
narrowing long eyes--"queer eyes" he mentally termed them--to see the
better through her veil.
"What glorious stars!"
He liked the soft warmth of her voice, as he answered:
"Magnificent, aren't they? Look at Draco blazing away, high over the
north transept of the Cathedral. And that would be Aquila--I rather
fancy--lowish on the horizon, over that ruined tower. That's a bit of
their famous Abbey----"
"Great Scott!"
"Did anything startle you?" he asked. "You said----"
"I know I said it, but I didn't mean to. There, again--" She pointed
as forked tongues of pale rainbow-tinted fire leaped up from the
northern horizon, throwing into momentary relief the Cathedral's stately
bulk and the huddled housetops.
"Those are Boche fireworks!"
"Fireworks?"