Part 14

His courtesy insulted. His smile was an outrage. She controlled the trembling of her lips with difficulty. Whether he observed or not was uncertain, he seemed to busy himself solely with the selection and kindling of his cigar.

"Pardon that I get in first, as I shall be driving!" he said, and threw away the smoking vesta, pushed back the hall-boy who was wrestling with the door-handle, got in and took his place at the steering-wheel, beckoning to Patrine.

"Thanks, but I cannot.... I am going to Berkeley Square."

"I will drop you at Berkeley Square." He met her eyes hardily. "You will not refuse me this pleasure, when I have not seen you since--" The slight significant pause stabbed as it had been meant to. He saw her wince, and finished: "Since two days. Will you not get in?"

She took the seat beside him. He stretched his arm across her knees and shut the door neatly. She leaned back to avoid his touch, and he smiled, feeling her shudder. Her eyes were on his gloved left hand as he drew it back.

He manipulated the electrical starter and the yellow Darracq moved up and out of Short Street. Patrine stared before her, sitting rigid in her place. Not once did her glance visit _him_. But every skilful movement of his hands upon the steering-wheel, every creak of the springy leather cushion under his great body, every tightening of his mouth or twitch of his thick red eyebrows, were photographed upon her brain.

He was irreproachably got up in thin, loose grey tweed morning clothes, cut by a West End tailor, and his feather-weight grey felt hat testified to the make of Scott. His knitted silk tie, a combination of electric blue and vivid yellow, was a discordant note. Patrine was certain it must have been the work of some other woman in Berlin. The heavy flat gold ring through which the ends were drawn was set with a ruby and two diamonds, another false note that jarred her painfully. But he was looking strong and well and in admirable condition. His blue eyes were bright, his red hair and his tightly-rolled moustache glittered in the sunshine, there was a bloom of perfect health upon his florid skin.

If Patrine did not look at von Herrnung, his eyes were less abstemious with regard to her. Under cover of their short red eyelashes, they scrutinised her from time to time. There was unbridled curiosity in their regard, and also a retrospective vanity, admiration, and resentment as well. She rode the high horse. She was hellishly sure of herself. Sure of von Herrnung, it might be. This passed in his mind as he said to her:

"Do you know that this car has had the honour to carry the Emperor of Germany? When _Seine Majestaet_ paid a visit to England in the year 1907, he used it every day."

Patrine returned indifferently:

"It seems to go smoothly."

Von Herrnung said, as the car obeyed every motion of his practised hands upon the steering-wheel:

"It is a wonderful traveller. It has been fitted with a Heinz motor, three times more powerful to its weight than any other known petrol-engine. Some journeys, I can tell you, it has had with the All Highest. Travelling incognito, driven always by a--certain young Prussian officer; then of Engineers--attached to the Personal Staff specially for this work."

"I daresay you mean yourself?"

"That is a clever piece of guessing; I congratulate you, _gnaediges Fraeulein_. Well, it is now no secret. I do not object to admit having been the young _Leutnant_ in the case. So now you know how I gained my _flair_ for English scenery and my violent penchant for English beauty. A weakness of which I am rather proud, since it is one the Emperor shares."

The final sentence might have conveyed a jeer. But Patrine was not listening. She called to her companion: "You are driving in the wrong direction for Berkeley Square, but it does not matter. Please put me down just here at the corner of Harley Street. I can leave this letter at a house there instead of putting it in the pillar-post."

"You are not getting out, _gnaediges Fraeulein_. You are coming with me to Hendon. I have there a little business which will occupy an hour." He added with a familiarity that stung, looking at the tense white profile and the black brows knitted in anger: "You are yourself to blame that I cannot part with you. You are really as magnificent by day as by evening--with your so-gloriously-coloured hair. May I also congratulate you on the effective costume? Black and white are our Prussian colours. I take that as a personal compliment."

"Take it as you like, it will not make it one."

"_Sehr gutig_. I do not need telling. When I want things I take them. It is a habit of mine."

He spoke sheer, brutal truth. Oh God! what of Patrine's had he not coveted and taken, only two horrible days ago. "So," he went on, "you will have to post your letter. I will stop at a _Postammt_ and drop it in for you. You see, I am greedy of your society. At any moment I may be recalled to Germany. One must catch the Bird of Happiness and hold it while one can. Now tell me, is not that a pretty speech?"

"Extremely, but it does not alter the situation. I have a particular appointment. I cannot go to Hendon with you."

"I have already told you that we are going there. _Grosse Gott!_" His tone was savage. "How is it that you are so confoundedly stubborn? Do you think such behaviour sensible--or wise?"

"I am certainly wiser than I was two days ago."

He slewed his head round to look at her with a greedy curiosity. He saw the lines of face and figure grow rigid, and her bare hands clench themselves together in her lap.

He glanced at her ringed hand, then transferred his regard to his own left hand, the glove upon which he had retained at the Club. The soft dressed _suede_ bulged as though a bandage were concealed underneath. She averted her eyes hastily as though she shunned some ugly, sickening, spectacle. He said:

"I see that you honour me by wearing my mascot. The magpie pearl most excellently becomes your beautiful hand, my dear!"

They had reached Regents Park Square and were turning into the Broad Walk. She plucked the ring from her bare finger, and held it out to him, saying in a low tone:

"Please take it back!"

"I am to take it back? ... You are in earnest?"

She repeated her words, holding out the bauble. He released his gloved left hand from the steering-wheel to take it. His eyes were on the road ahead and his face was hard as pink stone. But she heard him give a little sigh of relief as he slipped the ring into an inside coat-pocket. He said, as though to excuse the sigh:

"It was given me in April, when I made my raid on Paris from Hanover, landing my _Albatros_ once only during two days' flight. The weather was magnificent. My engine gave no trouble. That is why I call the ring my mascot, you understand. Now that it has been worn by you, it is more precious than when I first received it. Whenever I look at it, it will speak to me of you."

"Don't let it!"

"Why should it not speak of you? Isis! My heart's Queen!"

"I have told you--don't revolt me with--piffle of that kind. And don't touch me, unless you want me to jump out of the car!"

A voice that he barely knew had issued from the face she turned on him--a face all violet shadows and haggard drawn lines, under the burning splendour of the dead beech-leaf hair. She vibrated like an electrified wire, and round her pale pinched mouth and about her blue-veined temples were little points of moisture, fine and glittering as diamond-dust.

"Am I to understand that my touch is unpleasant to you? That you are angry with me? That you do not love me any more?"

"Love...."

She laughed out harshly, hugely disconcerting him.

"Lady Wathe said at that Grand Prix night dinner in Paris that you were without a sense of humour. But you must have a grain or so--to talk of love to me!"

She turned her face away, and the exquisite beauty of her small white ear appealed to him provokingly. He ground his teeth. He could have thrown his arm about her, and crushed the tall, full, womanly figure against him. How superb she was in her mood of hate. The strapped-up wound in his left hand was throbbing and smarting, just as when she had writhed her head free from his furious kisses and bitten him to the bone.

He had made her pay richly for her bite. He hugged himself as he remembered.... Now the sting of desire was renewed in him and he eyed her with greediness. Presently he stooped and said in her ear, coaxingly:

"Let us be friends! Dine with me at the Rocroy to-night. We will have a box at the Alhambra, and sup again at the Upas. Say you will come, loved one! Will you not, Patrine?"

"No!"

"No? But I think you mean Yes! Do you not?"

"I have said No! Is that not enough?"

"You are mad!" he blustered at her--"mad as a March hare!"

She answered him:

"I have been mad, but I am sane now and I stay so."

He said scoffingly:

"You may not always remain as you are now!"

If he launched a poisoned dart, its meaning glanced aside from her.

"Shall you not write to me when I am back in Germany? Not one line? Not one single word? Yet I have a few little notes from you that I particularly value...."

"Make the most of them. I shall write no more." And suddenly her hate and loathing of him reached boiling point and ran over. "My God! Can't you understand that I ask nothing better than never to see nor hear of you again!"

"_Grossartig_! You are hellishly conciliatory." His voice was thick and shook with anger. His smile mocked and the look in his eyes was hateful as he pursued in a tone that was now quite gentle and purring: "Just think a bit, my dear! Because--to burn one's boats behind one--that is not prudent at all!"

She did not answer, and he drove on to Hendon, planning fresh assaults upon this unconquerable woman's pride.

*CHAPTER XXV*

*THREE MEN IN A CAR*

When the yellow Darracq car turned in under the archway that advertised Fanshaw's Flying School in three-foot capitals, the name revived no associations in the mind of Patrine. She had never visited the aerodrome upon an afternoon in the mid-week, when as in the present instance practice and instruction were being carried on. The cafes, no longer crowded by smart people, were thinly patronised by bronzed young men in overalls, not innocent of lubricating medium, thirstily drinking ginger swizzle or sucking iced-lemon squashes through yellow straws. Business-looking middle-aged men discussed the market-prices of steels and timbers, dope and fabrics, over bitter beer and ham-sandwiches, while experimenting amateurs, male and female, discussed in loud, relieved voices the experiences of the premier flight. These, having been previously warned not to experiment upon a crowded system, were now ravenously putting in the solid, three-course lunches they had foregone.

It was a perfect July day, hot and blue and green and golden. To the nor'-west, you glimpsed the elms and oaks and beeches of Boreham Wood, westward the chestnuts of Bushey and Stanmore in fullest summer foliage. The hawthorns of New Barnet were already browning in the sun. Hill and common were plumy with the brake-fern. Heather and ling were purpling into bloom.

Still looking westwards, you snatched a glimpse of Windsor. Eastwards, a diamond set in emeralds, was the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. Across the whitish-grey scarp of Highgate and the verdant shoulder of heathy Hampstead you saw the dun-coloured haze that is the breath of London, the huge, black, formidable and formless monster, as, sprawling on her ancient River, she keeps her envied place in the Sun.

At the cafe end of Fanshaw's enclosure the Frogged Roumanian String Orchestra were playing the "Dance Rhapsody" of Delius. From a rival establishment came the brazen strains of a German band in a death-wrestle with ragtime. Behind a straggling crowd of visitors, where the cars that had brought them were parked in a double row, von Herrnung stopped the yellow Darracq, leaned across Patrine's unwilling knees and opened the car-door.

As Patrine was getting out, a large hand in a white leather glove was thrust forwards for her assistance. The owner of the hand was a square-faced, fair-haired, soldierly-looking servant of the somewhat hybrid type that has replaced the carriage-groom. He wore a dark blue livery overcoat with silver braid upon collar, belt, and shoulder-straps, black knee-boots, and a white topped cap with silver braid, a shiny black peak and an enamel front badge in black, white, and red. Looking past Patrine, he saluted in military fashion and spoke to von Herrnung in German, of which language Patrine possessed a smattering:

"Will the _Herr Hauptmann_ speak to the _Herrschaft_? Upon business. _Er ist sehr wichtig_."

Von Herrnung, at the first sound of the messenger's voice, had stiffened to rigidity. He glanced over his shoulder in the direction pointed out by the big hand in the white glove, and answered:

"Say to the _Herrschaft_ that I come!"

The groom vanished. Von Herrnung jumped out of the yellow Darracq and went quickly over to the machine that had been indicated, a large, superbly-finished F.I.A.T. touring-car of the landau-limousine type, enamelled dark blue with a narrow silver line of finish. The top was open. A white-capped chauffeur in dark blue and silver livery sat immovable at the steering-wheel, and three men, only one of whom was plainly visible to Patrine, occupied the roomy body of the car.

The visible man, sitting in the forward seat with his back to the motor, his baldness topped, in deference to the weather, with a white felt Newmarket, was a long-bodied, broad-shouldered personage, certainly over seventy; clean-shaven, with staring eyes of light grey tinged with bilious yellow, and skin of a prevailing yellow-grey doughiness, with a huge wart in the middle of the cheekbone on the side next to Patrine. His clothes were of yellowish-grey like his eyes and skin, his linen had a yellow line in it and a huge, crumpled vest of buff nankeen threw into relief a flaming crimson satin necktie confined within bounds by a flat jewelled ring. He had the air of an old actor of character parts, or of a libertine monk who has foregone the cord and cowled habit. Of the two men sitting facing him little could be seen beyond the peak of a gold-banded white yachting-cap pulled rather low over a bronzed and rather aquiline profile with an upward-turned moustache and slightly-grizzled beard of reddish-brown, and a Homburg straw with a broad black ribbon and a slouched brim, overshadowing the face of the man who sat on White Cap's left hand. An astute and cunning face, his; long and sallow, with narrow, blinking eyes, a drooping nose, and a drooping black moustache. With this its owner played constantly, twisting and pulling it with a delicate white hand that wore a diamond solitaire. He never looked up, when addressed by either of his companions, but raised his eyes to the speaker, and pivoted, without lifting his head.

Von Herrnung's friends were nothing to Patrine, and von Herrnung's person was by now intolerable, yet her eyes unwillingly followed the tall, soldierly figure as he drew himself up, clicked his heels and uncovered. A brown hand went up to the peak of the white yachting-cap, the wearers of the straw Homburg and the felt Newmarket slightly raised their hats. Von Herrnung did not speak first, he waited bareheaded to be spoken to. When the door of the big blue car was opened by the servant at an imperious signal from the sallow man, von Herrnung got inside, and sat down beside the personage with the wart on his cheek,--leaning forwards deferentially to be addressed by the bearded wearer of the white yachting-cap, who made great play with a brown right hand that sported a heavy gold curb-chain watch-bracelet. Once the hand clenched and shook in vivacious threat or warning, very close to von Herrnung's handsome nose. That made Patrine laugh, and instantly she was angry with herself for laughing. She put up her long-sticked sunshade, turned her back upon the blue F.I.A.T. car and moved away towards the part of the enclosure where the visitors sat or promenaded, drawing eyes as she went with her spangled silver headgear twinkling in the sunshine, and its black cock's plume waving over her strangely coloured hair.

So changed, so changed. She was sensible of an alteration even in her gait and gestures. A sickness of the soul weighed on her body as though she walked in invisible fetters of lead. The free space, the fresh air, seemed to yield no physical stimulus. She had bitten deep into the apple of Knowledge, and found bitterness and ashes at the core.

*CHAPTER XXVI*

*A PAIR OF PALS*

Among a dozen pairs of masculine eyes that followed the gallant womanly figure, crowned by the plumed hat of silver spangles and displayed in the frank unreticence of fashion by the semi-transparent sheath of glistening white, a pair very blue, very shiningly alert and interested, drew nearer until the elongated shadow of a small boy in Scout's uniform mingled upon the sunlit turf with the longer shadow of Patrine.

His thumping heart had said to him: "You know her!" It was Pat and yet not Pat. Her tall, rounded figure. Her walk. The same face--and another woman's hair. The white gown and the long stole of black cock's feathers he had seen before, and the hat had previously fascinated him. He had asked Pat if it were not made of the twinkly stuff with which they covered the Bobby-dazzlers on Christmas trees? She had cried "Yes!" and assured him that she would always hereafter call it her "Bobby-dazzler chapper." ... And his Cousin Irma, whom Bawne secretly abominated, had said it was too bad to talk costermonger slang to the child. "_The child_." ... A man must be ready to pardon an insult from the unpunchable female. But Bawne found himself wishing that Cousin Irma had been a boy.

He loved Pat. You had to love a person who could keep secrets as faithfully as Dad or Mother, and play tennis and hockey better than a great many grown-up fellows. Bowl you out at cricket, too, middle bail, before you could wink. She could cycle all day without getting knocked up, and swim a mile, easily. For these reasons Bawne knew he loved her. But he loved her most for the reasons that he did not understand.

"Pat!"

He had screwed up his courage to touch his crusher felt and speak the name, but the tall lady with the electrifying hair did not seem to hear. Her long eyes looked at him in a blind way without seeing him. He had never kissed this frozen, stranger's face.

"I thought you knew me! I most awfully beg your pardon!" he stammered, in scarlet anguish, and the dull eyes suddenly came to life, and the stiff lips smiled:

"It's Bawne. My sweet, I'm glad! How did you come here?"

"Dad brought me because he'd promised," the boy said joyously as they shook hands.

"Where is Uncle Owen?"

"Over there." Bawne pointed to two men talking apart beyond the straggling line of spectators, and Patrine recognised the great frame and scholarly stoop of the Doctor, standing with his side-face towards her, a half-consumed cigar in the corner of his mouth, and his stick, a weighty ivory-topped Malacca, loosely gripped in both hands behind his back.

"And the man he is talking to? Why--of course! It's Sir Roland--how is it I didn't recognise him?"

"The Chief Scout!" Bawne's tone was one of incredulous wonder. "But you couldn't have forgotten _him_! It--isn't possible!"

Nor even to a stranger did he appear a personality to be easily forgotten, the bright-eyed, falcon-beaked, middle-aged man, whose feather-weight crusher felt was worn at an inimitable angle, and whose slight, active figure set off his well-cut morning suit of thin blue serge in a way to arouse envy in a military dandy of twenty-five.

"You see," Bawne explained, "_he_ was talking business with Father, so I just took myself out of the way." He added: "They hadn't told me to, but they might have forgotten. And so"--the big word came out of the childish mouth quaintly--"I acted on my initiative--you understand?"

"I understand." The formal handshake once over, their fingers had not separated. She held in her large, strong, womanly palm the hand that was little, and hard, and boyish. It squeezed her fingers, and the squeeze was an apology. It said:

"I'd like you to have kissed me if there hadn't been lots of people looking. For, of course, you know I love you, Pat!"

"And I love you, Bawne. We'll always love each other, whatever happens," said the answering pressure. Her spoken utterance was:

"So these are your holidays! ... How did you leave them all at Charterhouse? And--are you still tremendous pals with young Roddy Wrynche?"

He said, with a naive, adorable gravity:

"Boys don't squabble like girls--and Wrynche is a frightfully decent fellow. We passed together from Shell into Under Fourth, and we've promised always to stand by each other!"

"Good egg! And now, how is it you're here? Has Uncle Owen given in at last about the flying?"

"Really and truly! Man alive!"--Bawne's characteristic expletive--"I've been up to-day in the air-'bus and--wasn't it first-class!"

"Honour?"

"Honour! Twice round the aerodrome with the Instructor--and presently I'm to have a longer flight with Mr. Sherbrand in his monoplane."

"'Mr. Sherbrand' ..." Patrine repeated rather vaguely. "Sherbrand" had somehow a ring that was familiar. Bawne explained:

"He's a great friend of Father's. He's splendid. A regularly topping chap!"

"And you've actually flown?"

"I've flewed--and I mean to go on with it." He repeated the assurance more sedately: "It's the profession I have chosen. They say you've got to begin young. And my legs wobbled and the ground rocked a bit when I got down on it. But I wasn't air-sick at all."

"_Air-sick_.... Are people...?"

Bawne said from the pedestal of superior knowledge:

"Oh, aren't they just, like anything! The Calais-Dover steamer-crossing's nothing to it sometimes--the Instructor told me."

Patrine laughed. The latest circulating-library novel, _Love in the Clouds_, had omitted to mention this fact. The heroine had donned an aviator's cap and pneumatic jacket, and "leapt nimbly on board" the aeroplane in half a gale of wind. As the machine dipped and rose gracefully upon the heaving element that cradled it, Enid had experienced merely a delicious exhilaration. Then a crisp moustache had brushed her rosy ear. The voice of Hubert, attuned to deepest melody of passion, had murmured in the shell-like organ of hearing: "Little girl. At last I have you! ... Mine, mine, my bride of the swan-path!--mine for ever and aye!"

Bawne continued, innocently discounting further statements on the part of the author of _Love in the Clouds_:

"He told me before we went up, you know. Of course, when you're flying you can't hear anything but the racket of the propeller. It goes roaring through you till your bones buzz, and the very ends of your teeth hum. So the other man has to yell at you through a trumpet, or write to you on bits of paper, unless he's switched off the engine for diving, and then you don't feel like talking--that's if you're a beginner, you know.... But man alive! it's splendid. You must try it, Pat!"

She declared, laughingly:

"While a single flight costs a brace of my hard-earned guineas, the sport is not for me! Why haven't I got a pal like your wonderful Mr. Sherbrand? I'm getting envious--you lucky infant, you!"

It didn't hurt to be called an infant by Pat, because she never would have done it in a stranger's hearing. And it was ripping to have her here, sharing his hour of joy.