Part 23

"No," she said bluntly, "I don't think I believe in God at all now, though it sometimes seems as though there must be Somebody behind things!--Somebody who punishes--Somebody who laughs! As for a religion, I don't suppose I've ever had one. Oh, yes!--my religion is Aunt Lynette!"

A mental picture of Lynette, years ago in the Harley Street nursery, teaching a curly-headed baby Bawne to say his evening prayer, while a great galumphing girl stood in the doorway and looked and listened, rose up and brought with it the horrible choking sensation. She fought with it as Sherbrand said:

"I think you are speaking of Mrs. Saxham? Well, one must have a star to hitch one's waggon to. And she is a star--if ever I saw one! A woman with a face like a Donatello Madonna, or a tall lily growing in the garden-cloisters of some Italian mountain-convent, and who has the Faith,--ought to be able to teach you to believe in God! Why not ask her? I once knelt in a Church near her, and saw her praying. She seemed--very close to what Norman or someone else called the Eternal Verities."

"She will be nearer still," said Patrine with sudden, savage roughness, "if anything happens--if Bawne is killed! She will die of a broken heart!"

"Then why not pray," argued Sherbrand, "that she may get him back again? Why not try it? There's nothing else that helps so well!"

"Pray!" The tall girl stopped short and swung round on him, facing him. A moment since they had walked like lovers. Now the spell was broken--at all events, for the time.

"Pray--pray!" she mocked. "Am I a sneak?--to pray when I don't believe in prayer! And if I did believe, God--if He exists--would not hear me. Even the parsons own He has His favourites. I am not one of them.... I am one of His forgets!"

*CHAPTER XL*

*MACROMBIE IS SACKED*

Tall, lithe, vigorous, masterful, they confronted each other across the gulf that suddenly opened between them--the bottomless chasm that yawns between Faith and Unbelief.

In the fitful uncanny light, the darker side of Patrine started into sinister prominence. Her defiant face was masked by shadow, but the fierce vibrating voice and towering shape had something of the fallen angel. Had wide sable pinions sprung and bannered from her shoulders, Sherbrand would hardly have been surprised.

"Let us draw the line at that. If we are to be friends--and I would like us to be!--agree to it! But since you have what I have not--you would call it Faith, no doubt," he guessed the wide mouth curving in a jeering smile, "there is nothing to prevent _you_ from praying for Aunt Lynette and for Bawne too! Unless you are the kind of physician who draws the line at taking his own drugs!"

If she had thought to disconcert Sherbrand she erred. He said instantly:

"I give you my word of Honour that I will pray for them! But there is one other person much dearer to me than either. You don't ask me for _her_, but all the same..."

"You kind, dear boy! Pray for me all you want to!"

She was his big, smiling girl of the Milles Plaisirs, and the Pat young Bawne worshipped, as she stretched out her beautiful, massive arm and offered him a cordial hand.

"Shake, Mister! Making love to me one minute and bally-ragging me the next! ... Great Scott! Ah!--I've said it again--and I gave you my word I'd not!"

He took the hand in a close grasp, sought for the other and took it also....

"Thank you! Why, how you're shivering! You have nothing but that feather thing over your thin gown! Wait half a minute--I'll get you a wrap!"

He was gone in an instant, leaving her standing on the border-line of one of the oases of black-velvet shadow, swayed by the violence of her emotion as some tall young birch might have been shaken by the fury of a south-west gale.

His touch.... She had not dreamed.... Her head drooped, and a long sigh went fluttering after him into the darkness, like some night-moth whose wings are wrought of hues more gorgeous than the peacock butterfly's, whose scent is on the alert, and whose diamond eyes pierce the blackest midnight in search of the partner of its kind.

A footstep she knew approached. A familiar voice called her:

"Uncle Owen." The spell broke. Her mind leaped up alert and quivering. "Have you any news--of Bawne?"

"I have news!"

"Not----"

"Not the worst news," said Saxham's harsh voice, "but not--hopeful!"

"They are not coming back?" She strove to set her heel on the treacherous hope that he would say No! For how could she bring herself to desire the enemy's return. And yet the thought of Bawne was a stab of anguish in her bosom. What was the Doctor saying?

"The last definite intelligence received of them confirms the certainty that Captain von Herrnung is now over the North Sea. He alighted nowhere; that we have positively learned from many different news-centres. A tractor-monoplane answering to the description and carrying two-passengers passed the Bull Light on Spurn Head, at a few minutes before eight. The lighthouse-keeper signalled that bad weather might be expected. The pilot paid no attention. And later on----"

As Saxham spoke, with that strange hoarseness, Patrine took his arm tremblingly. Her heart plunged as though it would burst its prison as the Doctor went on:

"An hour or more later a Wireless came in. It had been sent on to Sir Roland from the Admiralty!--I will not puzzle you with technical details. But at 8.30 the officer on duty on the upper-bridge of the second-in-line of a Battle Squadron steaming through Northern Waters on the way to a Southern rendezvous, reported having heard an aeroplane pass overhead, crossing the course of the Squadron diagonally--apparently flying due east----"

Saxham added:

"The aviator made no signal for assistance. But the engine-beat told of trouble developing.... There is nothing to do but wait and hope!"

What had really happened on board H.M.S. _Rigasamos_, maintaining her appointed speed of fifteen knots, and her statutory two-cable-lengths from the stern of the Flagship ahead, and the bows of the sister-ship following her, had been that as the ship's band struck into _The Roast Beef of Old England_, and the Owner took his place at the head of the Ward-room mess-table, his Second in Command on the fore-bridge got a speaking-tube message from the Navigating Lieutenant on the upper-bridge, to say that the drone of an aeroplane, flying at about four hundred overhead, had been picked up by Warrant Officer So-and-So, of the gun and searchlight control, _per_ medium of the microphone.

The Second in Command called back through the voice-tube:

"An aeroplane.... You're sure? Could hear her racket myself, without assistance. But put it down to a Fleet Seaplane taking a flip round the Squadron for exercise, or one of the Goody-Two-Shoes from the R.N.A.S. Station at Rosforth, blown out to sea doing Coast Patrol."

An answer rumbled down the pipe:

"It was an aero all right, sir! The rattle of her floats 'ud have given away a Goody.... Travelling east against the side-drive of a forty-mile-an-hour north-west gale.... And with engine trouble well developed. Missing and back-firing like the gayest kind of hell!"

The Second in Command took his ear from the mouth of the speaking-tube, and with a glance that included the figures of his Sub-Lieutenant, the Midshipman, signalmen, and lookouts at their posts swung into the chart-house and logged the occurrence in the plain language of the sea. The clock told 8.35 P.M. as he finished, capped his fountain pen, and slipped it in an inside pocket, soliloquising:

"Travelling east against a forty-mile-an-hour gale from the north-west, and with engine-trouble to top up with ... Little Willie will be seeing the angels pretty soon at this rate! Or piling himself up somewhere on the coast of Holland! Wonder who the bally idiot is?"

Saxham continued, and now he croaked as hoarsely as a raven:

"Sir Roland has little doubt that the aeroplane heard on the _Rigasamos_ was Sherbrand's 'Bird of War.' If so, there would be very little hope left, unless it had been previously arranged that a vessel belonging to--a foreign Power!--was to watch for and give help if she should require it. Now you know as much as I do. I have telephoned to both Lady Beauvayse and your mother that you return with me to Harley Street. We shall go presently. First, I want you to speak on the telephone to Lynette."

"To--Lynette!" Patrine breathed. The Doctor told her: "I have kept the worst from Lynette hitherto.... I shall do so until the ultimate hope is abandoned. My wife knows my voice so well.... You understand.... She would suspect something ..."

His voice stumbled and broke. And clinging to the arm of the big man standing quietly beside her, potent in inertia as a lump of raw iron, Patrine realised that her anguish was a drop in the ocean of his. She took his hand and said in a tone he had never before heard from her:

"Come, dear! We will go and speak to her now."

So they went across to the telegraph-cabin, raw with unshaded electric light and littered with papers. The Chief was there, looking livid and careworn, leaning one elbow on the edge of the stand that supported the Wireless, and wearing the telephone head-band with the ear-pieces, as he dictated to the pallid clerk who occupied a Windsor chair at a stained deal desk, and wrote with a spluttering pen on a depleted paper-pad. At first sight there seemed to be nothing else in the place but a low voice speaking, a Railway Key instrument, a file for telegrams and an overpowering odour of rum.

The odour of rum consolidated to Patrine's view into a stocky thickset man with a square heavy yellow face set into a tragic mask of despair. It was Macrombie, ex-Petty Officer telegraphist, whom the Royal Navy had spat forth for being D.O.D. fifteen full years before. Sacked now from his civil employment, for the old glaring, unblinkable offence.

The liquor had barely faded out in him; his breath came across the little cabin like a flaming sword, and his eyes under their beetling coal-black eyebrows looked burnt-out. He rose from the debilitated office-stool he had been sitting on, saluted Patrine stiffly and said:

"Mem, this is no place for a leddy, wi' a drucken wastrel like mysel' in it. Ay! I hae lat ower a drap too mony, I am awa' the noo wi' my weicht o' wyte. But no wi'oot a warstle have I yielded to the Enemy!" His anguish broke the flood-gates in a rumbling roar. "Like Job I hae cried oot in the nicht-watches to my Creator, speiring o' Him why He made weak men an' strong rum? He didna' gie me ony answer--and I am ganging down the Broad Road's fast as my bluidy thirrst can carry me--a disgraced and ruined man!"

"Mr. Sherbrand will give you another chance. I know he will!--I'll ask him!" came impetuously in the big warm womanly baritone.

"You're a grand woman to luik at, and the lad'll gie in--an' the haill deil's dance to begin ance mair.... Na, na, my bonny leddy!" said Macrombie, "ye can never lippen to the promises o' a drunkard. Best lat me gang my gait to muckle Hell. Ay! I'll no' be lonesome there for want o' company.... Toch! what a regiment o' Macrombies deid an' damned will answer 'Present' to auld Satan's rollcall! Guid-nicht, my leddy, an' thanks to ye a' the same."

He took his cap from a peg, and from the corner a bundle of miscellaneous possessions, rolled up in apparently a worn alpaca office-coat, and girt about with knotted string. He saluted the Chief and Saxham, and nodded to the telegraph clerk, and went out of the cabin in a plodding kind of hurry as though no grass should grow under his feet before he set them for good upon the dreadful downward Road.

His vice had played into an enemy's hands, and he would trust himself no longer. He meted out judgment to rum-soaked Macrombie, assuming for himself the prerogative of the One Judge. But he got his chance in spite of himself, when Britain's Hour came.

*CHAPTER XLI*

*SAXHAM LIES*

At Saxham's nod Patrine rang up Lynette, and the familiar voice that came back, spun out to a spider-thread of sweetness across the distance, stabbed the listener to the heart like a delicate blade of gold-wrought steel. It said, with a quiver in it:

"Of course, I am not nervous at all. And I know how much Bawne would enjoy the night-flying. But if Owen were not there, perhaps I might be--afraid that something was wrong. Owen!"

"Say that I am here," the Doctor signed, and Patrine obeyed.

"Tell my darling to speak to me," said the voice, and Patrine, dropping the microphone from suddenly useless fingers, saw Saxham take it and force his stiff white lips to speech:

"It is not possible--just at this moment. You forget----"

"Of course ... The fireworks!"

"Just so. The fireworks. Expect us in another hour. And--Patrine is here and coming back to Harley Street. To stay. Please tell Mrs. Keyse and Janey to get a room ready."

The cordial answer came:

"I will at once. Dear Pat! how glad I shall be to have her!"

"This is Patrine speaking now!"

Saxham's steady hand touched Patrine's in transferring the receiver of the telephone, and the chill of it stung like the touch of death. She could not control her trembling as she answered:

"You are always so kind to me, dear Aunt Lynette!"

"No, dear! In an hour, then? Take care of my precious," the sweet voice pleaded, "until I see you both..."

"Yes--yes!"

Saxham's hand hung up the receiver, rang off, and steadied Patrine, whose knees were melting under her weight:

"Don't ask me ... any more ... I--can't!" she begged of him brokenly. He said, and with those deep lines that showed in his hard grey face, and his light eyes staring haggardly from caves that grief had dug about them, Saxham looked older by twenty years:

"I know it was hard, but the thing had got to be done. How could I bludgeon her with the truth, whispered over a wire? Once face to face, the first glimpse of me will show her that I have lied to her. God help me!" said the Dop Doctor; "I told her I had stayed on here with Bawne to give him the treat of seeing a night-flying display."

"How--horribly clever of you!"

"So clever," Saxham answered harshly, "that I shall probably regret it to the end of my days. In the whole of my practice I have never known a well-meant deceit do any good--rather the opposite. Consequently, I preach to my patients Truth before everything--and break down and lie when my own turn comes--like the damned coward I am."

"We shall leave here now in a few minutes," went on the Doctor, glowering at his chronometer. "I sent Keyse away with the car upon a message. He will be here to take us home to Harley Street at half-past nine. You have ample time to telephone to Berkeley Square for your clothes and so on.... Lady Beauvayse's maid can pack them for you, I presume?"

"Oh, yes. She's decent in the way of doing things for me."

"Very well."

The Doctor left the telegraph-hut, and Patrine 'phoned to Berkeley Square. Then, with a sudden recollection of an appointment which must be cancelled, she gave the number that meant Margot's newly-furnished mansion, and presently heard the little bird-like voice chirping:

"Yes, this is 00, Cadogan Place. I'm Lady Norwater! ... Is that you, Pat? Yes? What cheer? ... I'm having a long, deadly domestic evening. Franky's reading an improving book aloud to me--at least he was when you rang up--'Matrimony for Beginners. A Handbook to Happiness,' it's called. But I don't believe the man who wrote it ever had a live wife."

"Probably not. Margot, pet, I can't possibly lunch with you to-morrow!"

"Don't say you back out because of the book! Fits has got it now under the sofa." Fits was Franky's lady bull-terrier. "And by the time she's done with it there won't be much left. Say you'll come!" Margot urged. "Franky's got to test a new car--so Rhona Helvellyn's coming with two or three Militant pals of hers. I'll give you lobster _Americaine_ and cold lamb in mint aspic--and strawberry mousse. There!"

"I'm frightfully sorry, my dinkie, but it simply can't be!"

"What tosh! And we're going to talk over ideas for speeches at the Monster Meeting of Women in October at the Royal Hall. And Rhona has a Grand Slam in the way of surprises--did she say anything to you about the Mansion House Banquet demonstration she's thought of for Monday night?"

"Yes, and I'm down on it--like houses!" declared Patrine. "Is Rhona really spoiling for a taste of skilly and yard-exercise? Don't you get mixed up. Think of Franky reading the paragraphs: 'POPULAR YOUNG PEERESS ON THE SUFFRAGE WAR-PATH. SOCIETY BEAUTY HECKLES THE LORD MAYOR! VISCOUNTESS NORWATER BURSTS UPON BANQUETING BISHOPS, IN THE CHARACTER OF A WOMAN WHO WANTS A VOTE!'"

Patrine called good-bye and rang off, turning with the smile upon her lips to see Sherbrand standing behind her with a long white coat upon his arm.

"I have brought you a wrap. A lady forgot it here the other day. Let me help you to put it on."

Patrine shivered as he drew the large loose garment round her. It was a white Malta blanket-coat, very soft and fleecy and warm.

"Shall we have another turn on the Grounds before the Doctor's car----" Sherbrand was beginning, when the Chief removed the Wireless head-band and came forward.

"Miss Saxham, I must detain you for a minute, I am afraid."

Sherbrand went out of the hut. At a sign the pale clerk evaporated. Sir Roland moved nearer to Patrine. How old he looked! she thought.

"You are done up! _Esquinte_, aren't you?'

"I am tired, but neither done up nor the other thing. Miss Saxham, you just now put me in possession of the details of a Suffragist plot. The friend of a friend of yours, backed by some other viragoes of the militant order, intends--I quote your own words!--to a bid for a diet of skilly, and prison-yard exercise, by interrupting the after-dinner speakers at the Mansion House Banquet on Monday night. Kindly let her know from me that the stewards will be prepared to prevent her doing so,--and tell her that women will never make successful conspirators until they learn to hold their tongues! Now, good-night. Your incautiousness has rendered Miss Helvellyn a service. She will bless it one day if she doesn't now."

He took Patrine's hand in his frank, strong clasp. The haggard lines on the keen bronzed face did not mar the beauty of its kindliness.

"You have given her a chance. Let's hope she makes the most of it. To herd with the--wild she-asses isn't the way to serve her sex. Rowdiness and shrieking will never get the Vote for Women. Burning down empty country-houses won't land a female Member in the House of Parliament. It isn't Propaganda to--behave like an improper goose. Mind you tell her! That you, Saxham?" as a tall figure came towards them out of the glimmering darkness fitfully splashed by the petrol-flares now burnt down and dying out. "Best take your niece home to Harley Street, she is thoroughly tired. Sherbrand and myself and Mr. Burgin here are good for hours yet."

*CHAPTER XLII*

*SAXHAM BREAKS THE NEWS*

"Owen! ..."

Lynette was dressed in a delicate, filmy black chiffon dinner-gown, and as Saxham's latch-key clicked in the front door-lock and she rose up out of the tail carved armchair that stood beside the large hall fireplace, her paleness seemed to diffuse light, like the whiteness of the moon.

"Owen ... He is not ... What ..."

Her wide bright glance went past the tall wrapped-up figure of Patrine to the taller shape that bulked behind her. No small active boy-form danced in its wake. She put out her arms, groping blindly--swayed and would have fallen, but that Saxham strode past Patrine, caught the slender figure in his powerful embrace, turned and carried his wife away down the short corridor that led to the consulting-room.

"Miss Pat, my dear! There's cold supper all laid an' ready waitin' in the dining-room. By the Doctor's special orders, and I was to see you eat."

Thus Mrs. Keyse, now for years housekeeper at Harley Street, a little light-haired woman, common of speech and innocent of grammar, but a pearl of price in the Doctor's estimation and her mistress's right hand.

"Don't say they fed you at 'Endon on 'am and salad an' pigeon-pie. Trash is the word," said Mrs. Keyse, "for resturong pastry, and them there piegeons, if language could be given 'em, would bear me out in what I say."

But Patrine refused baked meats, submitting to be escorted to her room and tenderly fussed over by the kind, Cockney-tongued little woman, and yellow-haired pink-cheeked thirteen-year-old Janey, out of whose small triangular face looked the honest grey eyes of W. Keyse.

Both Mrs. Keyse and Janey had been crying, for Keyse, who acted as the Doctor's chauffeur, had broken bad news in the kitchen-regions. Master Bawne, according to Keyse, had been taken for a trip in one of them Hairos by a German flying-bloke, and it was feared--not having returned or been heard of--that Something or Other had gone wrong.

Mrs. Keyse, a born optimist, rejected the idea of accident or casualty with ringing sniffs of incredulity. Master Bawne, the blessed dear! had prob'ly bin kidnup' by some foreign Nobleman wanting a Nair. Trust a German, Mrs. Keyse would never! having when a young woman in service at Alexandra Crescent, Kentish Town, N.W., been treated something frightful by a young man who travelled in shaving-sets of German silver and other fancy articles of Teuton origin. Keyse must often have heard her mention That There Green?

Keyse responded, lighting his pipe, for his wife and daughter had accompanied him to their own private parlour in the basement, looking out across the yard to the garage over which Billy and Janey had been born:

"Twice a day since you and me stood up before the dodger to git married. But you never tipped me as 'ow the bloke was a bloomin' Fritzer before. 'Ow do you make it out? Switch me on to the notion! 'Cos o' somethink in the German nickel 'e drummed in gettin' into 'im an' affectin' 'is blood?"

Mrs. Keyse, impervious to sarcasm as incapable of grammar, maintained that the subject under discussion had spoke wiv' a Naxent particularly noticeable when upset. Broken English, in moments of passion, with red eyes and white 'air simpular to one o' them Verbenas, had in conjunction with a decided bent towards bigamy, and an appetite for other people's savings, distinguished That There Green.

W. Keyse and Janey went off to bed, and the other servants, instructed through the Doctor's consulting-room speaking-pipe, shut up the house and retired, all save the night-maid who answered the telephone, and attended to the midnight rings at the hall-door. But Mrs. Keyse did not follow the household. The Doctor and Mrs. Saxham were still shut up together in the consulting-room. Mrs. Keyse owned to herself that she had talked all that rubbage about That There Green and cetra, to hide that her heart was as water in her bosom, and that she trimbled and shook all over after the fashion of them Fancy shapes of Chicken in Haspeck, or Coffin cream, or Blue Mange coloured with Scotch Anneal.

It grew late and later. The flares on the Flying Ground, many times renewed, had died down to greasy black ash in the scorched and dented buckets, before there was a movement or a sound in the dark consulting-room. Then the woman who sat in the chair sighed, and the long quivering breath she drew, stirred the thick hair of the man who knelt upon the floor before her, holding her in his arms.

"Owen!"

"My wife!"