Part 43

She was brave, but the sense of being almost alone in the house with those alert, observant eyes outside, spying upon her movements, made her heart beat suffocatingly, and brought chill damps of deadly terror to the surface of her skin. She moved to a chair with a clogging sense of ultimate effort--the nightmare feeling of striving against a powerful hypnotic influence, bidding her creep downstairs and open the street-door, step into the car waiting at the kerbstone, and be borne away by rushing wheels and whirling screws, or even swifter wings, perhaps, to that War-torn land where von Herrnung was waiting to exact his price for sparing the beloved head.

She drew the lock of hair from her bosom and whispered inarticulate tendernesses to it, stroking its red-gold beauty with fingers and lips. Not until now those bread white strands amongst the reddish-gold conveyed their sinister meaning. When it came it was like a blow delivered full between the eyes. She swayed forwards and fell upon her knees beside the table, her forehead resting on the clenched hand that held the boy's hair. All that was maternal in her fierce, undisciplined nature urged her now to make the sacrifice. Remorse for having forgotten the child in her absorbing love for Sherbrand, was a scourge of fiery scorpions that urged her to the leap.

Its uselessness, the certainty that von Herrnung would keep no hinted promise to restore the hostage, would have been no argument to deter her. Sherbrand's influence might have counterpoised, but she had sent away Sherbrand for his own sake. Now she would go to Bawne, buy him back with body and soul, if need be, from the hands of the torturer, or at least share his agony and die by his side.

Madness was near enough that night to sweep her tattered robe before the eyes of Patrine, and beckon enticingly with her sceptre of plaited straw. She was alone and she had borne so much, and nothing else could save Lynette's boy--unless it were a miracle! Where was God--where was God now? Upon that July night of the child's spiriting away Sherbrand had bidden her pray that Bawne might be restored to them. She had petitioned in a perfunctory way when she had thanked God for taking away von Herrnung--that the child might be traced and brought back. Now she clenched her hands until the nails dug into their palms, and groaned out, as the dry sobs racked her body, words that sensed after this fashion:

"Save him, save him! For Christ's love save him--and give him back! For the dear sakes of those to whom I have been so ungrateful! hear me--only hear me! and I will--be different. I will serve Thee, O God, who have ignored Thee! I will confess Thee, I who have denied! ..."

Mean, base, said her pride, to kneel and entreat Him whom you have neglected and insulted. Even though He heard, do you think that He would answer now? But with desperate effort she thrust away the thought from her. The Hound of Heaven had leaped upon her, flying. She felt his teeth in her garments, holding her back from the invisible hands that dragged at her. She knew that unseen forces of Good and Evil were engaged in furious battle for her soul.... And strangling, she gasped out incoherent sentences, wild appeals to the Divine Pity.... In the midst of these, startling her like a thunderclap, came a hurried knocking at the door.

"Miss Pat!"

It was the voice of Mrs. Keyse, and as Patrine stumbled to her feet and stood wild-eyed and shaking, the little, matronly figure in the black silk gown of housekeeperly dignity appeared upon the threshold of the room.

"You--wanted me, Mrs. Keyse? Is it about the--the yellow car? Have they----"

The hoarse voice and the white, wrung face conveyed to an ardent lover of Patrine that something was wrong with her Doctor's niece. Tragedy was in the air--but Discretion is the better Part of Value, and nobody knew better than Emrigation Jane what fierce passions could boil in the Saxham blood.

"No, Miss Pat. It's not the car, yet, though I fancied I 'eard one stop here a minute back. It's the telephone in the consultin' room ringin', and ringin',--and Chewse gone to bed," Chewse being the trained maid who admitted patients and received messages. "And me with the best will in the world never could make 'ead or tail of them tellermessages--except the 'ulloing! And pre'aps you'd come and write down for the Doctor whatever it is they've got to say...."

"Very well. Don't wait, I'm coming directly!"

Mrs. Keyse vanished, and with that dreamlike sense of unreality upon her, Patrine followed downstairs and passed along the silent corridor. The electric lamp above the Doctor's table had been switched on. She took the Doctor's chair and rang-up and waited, sitting where Saxham had sat when Lynette's sweet lips first touched his forehead--where the big man had planned self-murder in the darkest hour of his despair. The frayed patch on the Persian rug beneath her feet had been worn by Saxham's usage. The triptych frame that held the portraits of Lynette and Bawne drew Patrine's eyes as she sat waiting, and the clench of her big white hand upon the table-ledge, the bend of her black brows and the stern sorrow stamped upon her face made her likeness to the Doctor more than ever apparent now.

"Halloa!" she called, and the brusque harshness of her own voice was startlingly like Saxham's. A sense of Destiny oppressed her. She felt as one stifling in a vacuum--drowning for lack of air. Her prayers had rolled back upon her soul unanswered. The sense of spiritual desolation intensified her desperate loneliness. No good to pray and cling until you broke your nails to that great Rock that upholds the Crucifix. Better let go, and be carried away by the torrent. Signs and wonders are not wrought in these days!--said that other Patrine within Patrine--and if any were, there would be no miracle. You fool, you fool, to dream of one!

She was sorry for herself as she sat there waiting. This little duty done, she would rise and obey that sinister summons from the outer darkness. Nothing on earth nor in Heaven could help or prevent. The sudden tinkle of the bell came at this juncture. The call was in Sir Roland's well-known voice.

"Halloa! ... Is that you, Saxham?"

"Halloa!" she called back in that voice so strangely like _his_ and unlike her own.

"Good! Well, my true friend and faithful coadjutor of old time," said the crisp voice, shaken a little as though by some irrepressible emotion or excitement, "some news has been communicated to us by Wireless that will lift up your heart and your wife's. Are you listening? ... To-day, about six P.M., near Langebeke, north-west of Ypres, at the moment of the White Flag ruse that cost the Deershire Regiment two hundred men, a two-seater Taube, flying low, as though something were the matter with her engine, came wobbling over the British lines. Nobody shot at her--she had just given our side sufficient reason for consideration by dropping a highly-effective bomb on a wasp's nest of German machine-gunners--and she crashed to ground behind a battery of First Corps R.F.A. Her German pilot had been frightfully wounded. His passenger, who sat in his lap to steer--and dropped the bomb!--escaped with a shake-up. You've got the story? Then, here's the tag of it. WE'VE GOT YOUR BOY! Bawne was the lucky fellow who only got a shaking. He arrives at Charing Cross to-night at twelve sharp!"

He added, as a stifled cry travelled over the wire:

"Congratulations with all my heart, to you and Mrs. Saxham. And to Miss Pat, though I'm afraid she pays, poor girl, in sorrow for your joy. There is a report that Sherbrand's Bird of War No. 2 has been shot down by a Zeppelin he encountered returning to the Front from England to-day, to supply the place of an R.F.C. pilot--killed while on observation-service near St. Yves--for Callenby's Cavalry Corps."

There was a stifled sound of interrogation or an exclamation. The Chief continued:

"He had no bombs. It was madness to attack with only a Maxim and their magazine-revolvers, but glorious madness worth a thousand sane, reasonable acts. As it is, the Zeppelin--supposed to have been on her way from Ostend to bomb St. O--was badly crippled and compelled to turn back. It was a shell from one of her Q.F.'s that exploded Sherbrand's petrol-tank and set the Bird on fire. The machine was seen to fall in flames near Dixschoote--held by the Germans. Sherbrand and his observer must be prisoners--that is, supposing they're alive. Hard luck! Break it gently to the poor girl! Good-night!"

There was no answering Good-night, only a faint thud and rustle. Sir Roland did not guess what he had done as he rang off and hung the receiver up. And Lynette, coming into the consulting-room, noiselessly as a pale moonbeam, found a big galumphing girl she loved lying huddled between the chair and table, with her white face pressed against the spot worn threadbare by the Doctor's feet.

Coincidence, you say, perhaps. Well, but what is Coincidence? Is it a Dust-wind careering over the Desert in the neighbourhood of the Pyramids, playing with straw and twigs and dead locusts' wings, and one stray fragment of printed paper, as a Mounted Division of the British Expeditionary Force encamped upon the slope not far from Gizeh, ride out with the dawn to exercise their horses on the plain that is partly flooded by the Nile? Or is it the ragged quarter-sheet torn from an English newspaper, that wraps itself about the spurred ankle of the big blond young Englishman who rides the vicious chestnut mare?

Long lines of horses marching in threes for miles, black and coffee-coloured natives in flowing jubbehs mixed up with tanned young British Centaurs in sun-helmets and khaki shorts--and the rag of paper clings to the leg of the one man there whom its news concerns. She who is dearer than all save Honour is once more a free woman,--and his faith and constancy are to meet their reward. His letter lies before me; a sentence pencilled more blackly than the rest stands out upon the yellowish paper:

"_If this be accident it is incredible. If Design, it is miraculous. And I had rather thank Heaven for a miracle vouchsafed than owe even such happiness--to Chance._"

When the deep swoon gave place to semi-consciousness, the pale lips uttered nothing but broken words. Locked away safely behind them was the glorious news that would have changed two people's lives. Thus Lynette was still ignorant of her own great happiness, when having helped Patrine upstairs to her room and put her tenderly to bed, she dismissed Mrs. Keyse to her own slumbers, and took her place beside Patrine's pillow, listening to the sighing breaths that were growing deeper and fuller, keenly alert for the sound of the Doctor's latch-key and the Doctor's step in the hall.

It was close upon the smallest hour. Something had detained Saxham. Sitting in the darkened room beside the long prone shape beneath the coverings, Lynette was free to lean her head against the back of the chair she sat in and yield herself to the bitter sweetness of memories of her lost boy.

What the sorrow of Shakespeare wrought in deathless lines no halting pen like mine dare strive to portray. Enough that the beloved little ghost that haunted the woman whose heart was breaking, was closer than ever to Lynette on this night. All day the sweet obsession had thrust itself between Bawne's mother and solid, tangible things. The red-gold sheen of the boyish head, the gay blue challenge of the laughing eyes, the coaxing tones of the treble voice had tortured the senses they deceived. She had thrust him away with both hands, for ordinary, commonplace duties claimed, and yielding led the way to madness. He had come back again and again, to be driven away once more. Now that her hands lay idle in her lap--now that she was withdrawn from the world and its realities, the beloved little ghost returned and had his will with her.

Sitting in the haunted gloom, a strange conviction came to Lynette. This was not Grief, travestying in the figure of the absent, but a visitation from the World Unseen.... Bawne was dead, and had been dragged back from the threshold of the Beyond by her own unbridled yearnings. Could there be a punishment more terrible than this? Only those who have loved and lost, and clinging to their faith in a Future Life, strive to bear patiently the burden of bereavement, can comprehend the torture of this woman in this hour.

The Presence grew more torturingly tangible. The empty shell of the house that had been Bawne's home was full of his callings, his movements, his play, his laughter. She heard his quick soft breathing behind her chair in the darkness. Once she could have vowed that a hard little boyish hand brushed against her cheek. Then she was alone once more, except for the unconscious sleeper. And then the torture began all over again.

Bawne was coming home, late, from the Hendon Flying Ground. The long months of misery--the horror of the War--had been a dreadful dream. She heard the long _br'r'_ of the electric hall-bell under the impetuous insistent finger--the small scurry of his entrance, a squawk from the maid who answered night-calls--a whispered word or two, and the clumping of the heavy little brogues upon the stairs. Would he trip at the corner where he always stubbed his toe? she wondered--and she plainly heard him stumble. Then her hair stiffened upon her head, and a long shudder rippled through her. The little clumping brogues had stopped before Patrine's bedroom door.

"_Mother!_"

His voice called, and his well-known thump came on the door-panel. The handle clicked. She controlled her shuddering and forced her stiffened tongue to speech.

"_Come in, my own!_"

The tall door swung slowly inwards. A wedge of brightness from the lighted landing threw his shadow over the white-enamelled door-post.... The darkness of the room soaked it greedily up. Then the doorway was a square of radiance with a little ghostly figure framed in it. All the light was behind him. She could not see his face, but she felt his eyes upon her.... Then the voice that her ears were sick for said with a quaver in its treble:

"It's dark, but I can hear you breathing! ... Mother, why didn't you and Father come? I thought when I got there I'd be sure to see you! ... But amongst all those faces and faces not one was yours--and--Man alive!--I wanted to blub a bit! I'm not quite sure that I didn't, you know!"

She stretched her arms to the beloved little ghost, whispering:

"My poor, poor love, my baby, my treasure! Mother knows how much it hurt. But be patient a little longer. Soon--soon--your father and I----"

The woe-wave rose and swelled in her bosom, tears began to run over her stiff white face. The clasped hands she stretched to him were quivering, but she controlled them like the trembling of her voice.

"Go back to Paradise, my little son! Wait patiently, my love, my Angel! I have been wrong, but I will grieve no more! I will be patient:--O! believe----"

A man's footsteps sounded on the staircase and the great shadowy figure of the Doctor appeared behind Bawne's little shape. With a swift movement Saxham caught up the bewildered boy, made one long stride across the threshold, and put the warm, living treasure into the mother's outstretched arms...

Once again big black-lettered contents-bills shrieked from the railings and were worn after the fashion of heralds' tabards by the vendors of newspapers, and the editions were snapped up as fast as they came out. Here are some of the headlines:

"THRILLING ESCAPE OF KIDNAPPED BOY SCOUT FROM THE HANDS OF THE HUN. YOUNG HERO OF NORTH SEA ADVENTURE LANDS BEHIND BRITISH LINES AT LANGEBEKE IN TAUBE WITH A BOCHE PRISONER. FULL STORY OF HOW SCOUT WHO SAVED THE CLANRONALD PAPERS BOMBED THE GERMAN MACHINE-GUNS. DECORATION OF SCOUT SAXHAM WITH 'GOLDEN WOLF' BADGE BY ROYAL PRESIDENT AT ASSOCIATION HEADQUARTERS. PROBABLE TESTIMONIAL FROM BRITISH PUBLIC. AFTERNOON TEA WITH THE WAR MINISTER AT WHITEHALL. EXPECTED INVESTITURE WITH EDWARDIAN ORDER OF MERIT. WHAT YOU GET BY BEING PREPARED!"

And again:

"SPLENDID PLUCK OF BRITISH AVIATOR. FIGHTS ZEPPELIN ON WAY TO BOMB BRITISH HEADQUARTERS. AIRSHIP CRIPPLED. SHERBRAND R.F.C. KILLED. FALLS IN FLAMES OVER GERMAN LINES. HEROIC END OF SOLE REMAINING HEIR TO PENINSULAR WAR EARLDOM, AND INVENTOR OF THE HAWK-HOVERER THAT SOLVES PROBLEM OF STABILITY. WILL WAR OFFICE ADOPT GREAT INVENTION, EMPLOYED BY ALLIES' FLYING SERVICES?"

Three days later:

"SHERBRAND R.F.C. RECEIVES POSTHUMOUS HONOURS FROM FRANCE AND BELGIUM. CROIX D'HONNEUR AND ORDER OF LEOPOLD. WHY NOT BRITISH D.S.O.?"

*CHAPTER LXX*

*A LOVER'S JOURNEY*

The crossing--in this Arctic April weather when all of Britain and Belgium and North-West France lay under snowdrifts--had been calm and smooth enough for the worst sea-stomachs on the steamer. The tall young 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: