That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
A closing picture of a young couple sitting very close together on a
rustic seat in the garden of a cottage on Seasheere Downs, where
hyacinths bloom, and clumps of pink-white peonies, and the Birds of War
whirr overhead in a June's sky of speedwell-blue.
Patrine Sherbrand says to her husband, as the smoke of British
transports and heavily-laden supply-steamers slants against the east
horizon, and the knife-sharp bows of shepherding Destroyers cleave the
grey-green waters of the North Sea:
"If without dishonour to your dear name it lay in my power to keep you
with me, do you think I'd have it so? Not I! I'll have you carry on as
though I'd never even existed. For me--the work that lies at hand.
When that's done--dreams of you. If you were killed you'd live for
me--my man I gave for England! Our England that they'll never beat--not
even if they win!"
"Thanks, my sweet wife! Then when I say--our honeymoon is over----?"
"Ah, well! ... How soon? ..."
He told her, looking in her eyes, that did not flinch beneath his:
"In four days! The Medical Board finds me quite fit--and there's a
Flying billet waiting. Our Western Front...."
She said, as her heart beat on his and their mouths met in a kiss:
"Then--four more days of love with me, and fly, my Bird of War!"
The Chief Scout had said to Sherbrand in those days of July, 1914: "The
Saxham breed's a stark breed--hard as granite, supple as incandescent
lava, with a strain of Berserk madness, and a dash of Oriental fatalism.
They can hate magnificently and forgive grandly, and love to the very
verge of Death."
Sherbrand had found it so. He thanked God that this heart that he had
won would never change nor fail him. He knew that he could call his own
the love that reaches living hands to Love beyond the grave.
THE END