That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
actually resented the occasional visits of the Red Cross car from
Pophereele.
"Behold him again," they grumbled, "the tall, blind Englishman. What
does he seek here? Hardly to view our ruins that he has no eyes to see!
And now in another big grey car arrive a French priest and a woman,
asking, wherever they meet a soul to ask, if the blind Englishman is
here? The priest is a Monseigneur--Old Ottilie swears to the ring and
the purple collar. The woman is English, it appears. Perhaps she is
the blind man's wife?"
The car moved on where the roadway was not broken by trenches, crawling
painfully over litter and wreck. In the shadow of the ruined prison,
while yet the sun was high, they halted. Their chauffeur nodded to his
Belgian compatriot, the Red Cross orderly, interrogated by Monseigneur,
pointed to the tall brown figure standing on the grass beside the
twisted wreckage of a British aeroplane.
"I will wait here for you, Mademoiselle," said Monseigneur, getting out
and assisting his fellow-traveller. She was very tall and of supple
figure, and wore a long blue coat with the Red Cross shield-badge, and a
felt hat banded with the V.A.D. ribbon, pulled down over luxuriant
masses of hair--hair that had been cloudy-black as storm-wrack and had
been bleached to the hue of wintry beech-leaves, and now had darkened to
the brown of peat-earth, deepening in colour every day.
She gave Monseigneur her hand, thanking him, and suddenly he thought her
beautiful, although the tall young woman had not previously appealed to
the sense of beauty in Monseigneur. Her long eyes under their widely
arching brows were stars, her mouth was smiling. When she moved away
over the snow-patched grass, she seemed to tread on air....
Throughout the drive Patrine had been torn with horrible misgivings.
"What shall I say or do," she had wondered. "How shall I bear it if the
look upon his face should tell me, when Alan first hears my voice--that
I was wrong to come?" But the chilly fit had passed with the first
glimpse of Sherbrand. The rich, warm flood rising in her veins had
swept her doubts away.
Here on this shell-pitted expanse of turf you felt the War-pulse
beating. French 75's were putting over a furious barrage from the
south. North of the City of the Salient the British guns were slogging,
and through the chain-fire of the enemy's 77 mm.'s, his 11.2-in.
howitzers bellowed at short intervals, and sent in 600-pound shells.
The smoke of a train rose north-west in the direction of Thourout
Junction. That the train was a German train, carrying troops and guns
and munitions for War purposes, did not at once occur to Patrine. All
was well. Not a doubt remained. She was near her Flying Man again
after months of separation. Here at last was food for her hungry eyes
and drink for her thirsting soul.
"He has grown thin, poor dear!" she thought, seeing how the war-stained
khaki hung in folds on his tall figure. The broad shoulders stooped.
The chest had sunken, and he leaned upon a heavy walking-stick. The
beloved face was turned away, the line of the cheek was careworn. She
choked upon a sob and stopped short, fighting her emotion down.
The song of the soaring lark broke off. The bird dived to earth and hid
itself amongst the frosty grasses as the snoring whirr of aircraft came
out of the distance high in the sky to the west. Now the shape of a big
biplane gleamed pinky-white as a seagull, beating up against the thrust
of the snow-tanged easterly breeze.
Nearer and nearer flew the 'plane. Now one could see it distinctly. A
French machine by its blue-white-red rings, and a Caudron by its great
square tail. A silver-grey monoplane scurried in its wake, a Weiss by
the backward curve of its wing-tips. The whirr of its tractor and the
blatter of its machine-gun wakened the echoes sleeping among the leprous
white ruins of the city. The Caudron wheeled and circled beautifully,
and the trac-trac of its mitraille answered the machine-gun, and spent
bullets began to patter on the Plaine far below.
Suddenly the Frenchman banked and began to climb. The Weiss, its
aluminium sheathing glittering in the sunshine, climbed too, so rapidly
that the enemy's purpose was foiled. Then, at a great height they
circled round each other, and the crack and flare of explosive
revolver-bullets began to mingle with the blatter and trac-trac, and
little blobs of something that blazed and sputtered wickedly began to
drop with the bullets that tumbled out of the skies. It was the
prettiest sight. It suggested the amorous dallying of two big
butterflies, the squabble of a pair of hawking swallows, and yet the
issues were Life and Death. Suddenly the Weiss took to flight. A second
Caudron had showed upon the distance and the Kaiser's flier was not
taking any more on. Waiting for his countryman to come abreast, the
Frenchman hovered like a kite-hawk. And at the familiar buzz of the
horizontal screws a visible thrill went through Sherbrand. He took off
the smoked glasses that he wore, and turned his blind eyes upwards
towards the sound, and on his haggard face was stamped the anguish of
his despair.
"My poor boy!" nearly broke from Patrine, and hot tears scalded her
eyelids. He started, though she had uttered no word, and brought down
those unseeing eyes. His nostrils expanded as he inhaled the air. His
thick fair brows contracted. The first Caudron, exchanging signals with
the second, had ceased hovering and floated onwards, but Sherbrand's
thoughts had been brought down out of his sky.
"What is it? ... Why?" said the intent and frowning look. He snuffed
the air again and pondered still, and suddenly Patrine comprehended.
Some waft of perfume from her hair or clothes had reached the sense made
keener by his blindness, evoked some once-loved image, roused some
memory of her.
She crouched low, and looked up at the lean, lined visage yearningly.
Dear heart! how changed he was to-day from her young Mercury of the
Milles Plaisirs. And yet this altered face of his, marred by the broad,
new-healed scar that traversed the left cheek and temple, and the cloudy
look of suffering in the prominent grey-blue eyes, was dearer than ever
to Patrine.
How bravely the ribbon of the Croix de Guerre and the purple, green, and
silver of the Belgian Order showed against the war-stained khaki. What
woman living would not glory in such a lover, welcome the sacred charge,
rejoice to be his guide and minister! ... "Oh, my blind eagle, to sit
mateless in the darkness shall not be your fate, God being good to me!"
Some words like these were on the lips of Patrine.
But the words were unspoken. He was turning those cloudy, troubled eyes
towards his unseen sky again as though trying to project the vision of
his soul through the depths of aerial distance. Then he desisted as
though wearied by the effort. His stern face softened to dreamy
tenderness. His lips moved. Very quietly, but with infinite
wistfulness, he uttered her own name:
"Patrine! Patrine!"
He was thinking of her--he was dreaming of her--he was still her lover.
She knew a joyful shock, a checking of the pulses.... Then her blood
whirled on its crimson circle as though arteries and veins were brimmed
with wine. Her bosom heaved, her eyes were misty jewels, and out of the
wonderful silence about them came to her the low, sweet soughing of her
long-lost Wind of Joy.
She moved to Sherbrand, kissed him full upon the mouth, and called him:
"Alan!" And a great cry broke from him--a cry of wonder, triumph, and
joy. As his arms swept out to enfold her she knew that she had
conquered. She had not been deceived in reading love between the formal
lines.
"Life has nothing more to give!" was Patrine's thought as his arms held
her. It seemed that Death would be a tiny price to pay for such a
wonderful moment as this.
"My love, my love! Did you really think we could live without each
other?" she stammered through his eager kisses. "Didn't you know I
would have to come and carry you back home by the hair of your head?
Did you dare to dream that I or any of the people who love you could get
on without you? Your mother, and Aunt Lynette--and Bawne and Uncle
Owen--and Sir Roland--who managed things for me to come to you!--and
Margot and her boy ... for there is a boy--a regular topper--born last
November--with eyes just like poor Franky's! And you're to come back
and be kind to him and his mother--because you promised Franky you
would! So that old ghost of your succession to the Viscounty is
laid--and I'm glad of it! Another stone heaved out of the way that leads
me back to you!"
She went on, holding him as he held her embraced, pouring herself out in
a swift rush of eager utterance:
"Come back and help us readjust values. Everything's
changed--everything's altered--since the beginning of the War. We women
have found out--even the idlest and the vainest of us--that the things
we used to live for really meant nothing! What we have called Society
is a box of broken toys. The plays we have laughed or cried at--the
books we have read--the music we have gone rabid over--the frocks we
have sported--the flirtations we have revelled in--the scandals we have
discussed--none of these mean anything, count for anything--weigh
anything! Nothing is real but Life--and Love--and Death. Not life like
the life we used to know--nor love like the love we talked of. A life of
work, and help, and prayer, and hope--and courage--and the kind of love
that has wings and doesn't crawl in the mud. Nothing like the Death we
used to dodge and blink and dread so, but something nobler. Something
that leads through the Gate of the Grave--to God! Don't you see that
the War was sent to change us?--don't you see----"
He cried out:
"I shall never see again!" An ugly spasm wrenched his jaw aside. "They
think I take it pluckily. But every night I dream it over once
more--and the sky is rushing back, and the ground is swirling up--and
the Bird is toppling, spinning downwards, in a trail of smoke and fire.
I can hear my observer screaming, poor, poor fellow! How I escaped
burning I don't know. Then comes the crash!--and the grey void of
Nothingness out of which, aeons later, I crawl into a blind man's
dreadful world. A world that is all sounds and voices and sounds and
touches. A world where I must live--and die--in the dark!"
She said in her deep sweet voice, with her velvet cheek pressed against
Sherbrand's:
"With me. And suppose you saw me, and could not feel nor hear me?"
She felt him shudder as he answered:
"The thing would be Hell!"
"Well, then, let me try and make the best of it! For both of us, my
dear one!" She pressed closer to his breast, magnetising him with her
touch, her breath, her presence, summoning all her forces of womanly
allurements to charm him from despair. "Couldn't I reconcile my lover
to the dark?" she whispered.
"Are you cold, dearest?" he asked. For as the last words left her lips
a sharp vibration had passed through her. "You shivered as though you
were."
"Perhaps? ... I hardly know," said Patrine, thrusting away the loathed
memory of the Upas. "Perhaps the wind has shifted--or a goose walked
over my grave."
She changed her tone and began to tell him how Margot had evicted her
Uncle Derek and his Lepidopthingambobs and handed over the caravanserai
in Hanover Square to the Red Cross people for a Hospital--and how all
the wards were to be covered with vulcanised rubber--not a corner to
catch a dust-speck anywhere. And she went on to describe her journey in
search of Sherbrand, and her disappointment at finding him absent from
the Hospital at Pophereele--and the kindness shown her by the