Part 9

"So! He has told you all this, and you do not know his name, even? Perhaps it is on that card you hold in your hand?"

She started, and the card fluttered from her twitching fingers to the carpet.

"Allow me...." Von Herrnung stooped as though to retrieve the bit of pasteboard. "Curious! It has gone! ... It is not there!" he said.

"I think you have your foot on it." Her eyeballs ached, she felt weary, and flat, and stale. "Please lift up your foot and let me see if it is there," she urged, and grown suddenly obtuse, he lifted up the wrong foot. She was trying to explain that he had done so when they were rejoined by Courtley and Lady Beauvayse.

"Say, did you see she wore a head-band with a rubber mouth-hold at the back of her neck? And waist-fixings under her frillies so's Herculano could swing her around his head. My land! that man has jaw-power to whip Teddy Roosevelt, and she's got vim enough for a nest of rattlesnakes.... Used up, Pat? ... If you aren't, you look it!" The speaker yawned prettily: "I'm about ready to be taken back to by-by, though it's only two o'clock."

Von Herrnung escorted the wearer of the green bird of paradise as they went through dark alleys and illuminated avenues back to the archway with the blazing crowns and stars. Courtley accepted the offer of a lift back to the hotel. The German declined, saying that he preferred to walk, as the car was closed.

"Pardon! ..." His voice had arrested Morris on the point of starting the Rolls-Royce. His handsome face had appeared in the frame of the car-window. "Excuses! but this belongs to Miss Saxham!" His cuff shone white in the semi-darkness, the great magpie pearl on his little finger gleamed maliciously as he dropped the missing card upon Patrine's lap, and drew back, uncovered and smiling, as the car moved away. Later on, when she was safe in her room, she looked at the card, and read upon it in plain black lettering:

+-----------------------------------------------+ | | | ALAN SHERBRAND, | | | | PILOT-INSTRUCTOR AND BUILDER OF AEROPLANES, | | FANSHAW'S SCHOOL OF FLYING. | | | | THE AERODROME, | | COLLINGWOOD AVENUE, | | HENDON, N. W. | | | +-----------------------------------------------+

Something was scrawled in violet pencil on the upper blank space. Being a girl with notions about squareness, Patrine would not at first read, remembering that it was his private message to Davis, whom Chance had brought within his master's reach. But later still, or earlier, when, after a brief interval of silence, the traffic of Paris began to roll over the asphalt, principle yielded to impulse. She switched on the electric light above her pillow and read:

"_This Sarajevo business spells War. Must get back at once to Hendon. I trust to your Honour not to fail me. You know what this means to_

"_A. S._"

So the young Mercury in gabardine and overalls was a professional, a teacher; a pilot who helped men to qualify for the certificate given by the Royal Aero Club without breaking too many bones. She had seen the big painted sign in the Collingwood Avenue, Hendon, that advertised Fanshaw's Flying School.

"_I trust to your Honour_," he had written to his mechanic. The word would have seemed big, and awful, and imposing, spelt like that, with a capital "H," if the writer had been a gentleman.

Disillusioned, she tore the card into little pieces and sank into a heavy sleep before the broad yellow sunshine of Monday outlined the pink velvet brocade curtains unhygienically drawn before the open windows. And she dreamed, not of the magic wind that had blown upon her that night, nor of the Mercury-like figure in the suit of Carberrys, but of the supple bodies that had bounded and whirled, and of the gleaming panther-fangs that had clashed in mid-air. Then the dominant figure became that of von Herrnung. Again the red mouth under the tight-rolled red moustache alternately flattered, insulted, and cajoled. Again she felt that violation of her virgin flesh, its moist, hot touch upon her naked shoulder. Its kiss bit and stung.

She awakened late from those poisoned dreams to a riotous blaze of colour and a breath of musky fragrance. On the coffee-stand beside her bed lay a great sheaf of long-stalked roses; deep orange-hearted, with outer petals of ruddy flame. She plunged her face deep into the flowers. The corner of a large square envelope thrust from amongst them. She caught it between her teeth and pulled it out.

It was from von Herrnung, written on paper bearing the device of the Societe Aeronautique Internationale in the Faubourg St. Honore. It was brief enough.

"_That I offended yesterday, Isis will pardon. The address I promised is--'Atelier Wiber, 000, Rue de la Paix.' The good Wiber demands no fee for making Beauty yet more beautiful. All has been arranged._

"_Devotedly,_ "_T. v. H._"

*CHAPTER XVII*

*INTRODUCES AN OLD FRIEND*

Saxham, M.D., F.R.C.S., M.V.O., Consulting Surgeon to St. Stephen's and the Hospital of St. Stanislaus and St. Teresa, sat busily writing at the big leather-topped table in the consulting-room, that, with the well-stocked library adjoining, occupied the rearward ground-floor of the Harley Street corner house.

The hands of the table-clock pointed to eleven A.M. Since nine the doctor had sat at the receipt of patients, the crowd in the waiting-room had melted down to half a dozen souls. Fourteen years had gone by since Saxham, late Temporary Captain, R.A.M.C., attached Headquarters Staff, H.I.M. Forces, Gueldersdorp, had taken over the lease and bought his practice from the fashionable physician who had been ruined by the war slump in South African mining-stocks.

The broken speculator's successor had struck pay-reef from the outset. Society had taken Saxham up and could not afford to drop him again. He was harsh and unconciliatory in manner--a perfect bear, according to Society--but quite too frightfully clever; and as yet no speedier rival had outrun him in the race.

Now as the July sunshine, its fierceness tempered by the short curtains of pale yellow silk that screened the wide-open windows, came streaming in over the fragrant heads of a row of pot-grown rose-trees, ranged on the white-enamelled window-seat, it shone upon a man to whom both Time and Fortune had been kind. The admirable structure of bone, clothed with tough muscle and firm white flesh, had not suffered the degrading changes inseparable from obesity. Nor had the man waxed lean and grisly in proportion as his banking account grew fat. His scholar's stoop bowed the great shoulders even more, disguising the excessive development of the throat and deltoid muscles. The square, pale face, with the short aquiline nose and jutting under-lip, was close-shaven as of old. The thickly growing black hair was streaked with silver-grey and tufted with white upon the temples. His loosely fitting clothes of fine silky black cloth were not the newest cut, neither were they old-fashioned. They were suited perfectly to the man.

While Saxham minutely copied his prescription, the patient who sat facing the window in the chair on the doctor's left hand had not ceased from the enumeration of a lengthy catalogue of symptoms, peculiar to the middle-aged, self-indulgent, and tightly-laced. At the close of a thrilling description of after-dinner palpitations, she became aware that her hearer's attention had strayed. Following up his glance she ran him to earth in one of three tinted photographs that stood in a triptych frame upon his writing-table, and glowed with an indignation that tinged with violet a plump face coated with the latest complexion-cream.

"How very charming your wife is--still!"

The speaker, her recent character of patient now merged in that of visitor, plucked down her veil of violet gauze with a gesture that betrayed her wrath. But her voice was carefully honeyed to match her smile--as she continued:

"You have been married quite an age, haven't you?"

The anniversary of her own second honeymoon was due next week. She went on answering her own query:

"Nearly fourteen years, I think?"

Saxham answered, not glancing at the silver table-almanac but at the threefold photograph frame:

"To be precise, just fourteen years and six weeks. We were married on the 6th of June, 1900."

"You have a good memory--for some things!"

The undisguised resentment in her tone pulled Saxham's head round. He surveyed her with genuine surprise. She bit her lips and tossed her head, waggling her tall feather, jingling her strings of turquoise and amber, coral and onyx, kunzite and olivine, big blocks of which semi-precious stones were being worn just then, strung on the thinnest of gold chains. Each movement evoked a whiff of perfume from the scanty folds of her bizarre attire. Her frankly double chin quivered, and her redundant bosom, already liberally displayed through its transparent covering of embroidered chiffon, threatened to burst its confining bands of baby-ribbon, as the Doctor said:

"Is it not natural that I should have a particularly clear recollection of the greatest day of all my life--save one?"

"You're quite too killing, Owen!"

She laughed tunelessly, clanking her precious pebbles.

"Of course, we all know you're fearfully swanky about your wife's beauty. I saw her yesterday at Lord's--sitting under the awning on the sunny side, with the Duchess of Broads and Lady Castleclare. Your boy was with them, jumping out of his skin over Naumann's bowling for Oxford. Really marvellous! Your poor dear Cambridge hadn't a chance! Tremendously like you he grows--I mean Bawne. Really, your very image!"

"I should prefer," said Saxham, stiffly, "that my son resembled his mother."

"Ha, ha, ha! How quite too romantic!" She threw back her head, its henna-dyed hair plastered closely about it and fastened with buckles of jade, set with knobs of turquoise. A kind of stove-pipe of enamel green velvet crowning her, was trimmed with a band of miniature silk roses in addition to the towering violet plume. The plume, carefully dishevelled so as to convey the impression of a recent wetting, threatened the electric globe-lamp springing from a standard near. Her crossed legs liberally revealed her stockings of white silk openwork, patterned with extra-sized dragon-flies in black chenille, and her laugh rattled about Saxham's vexed ears like Harlequin's painted bladder, full of little pebbles or dried peas. "In love with your wife--and after fourteen years and six weeks!" Her fleshy shoulders shook, and her opulent bosom heaved stormily. She passed a little filmy perfumed handkerchief under her violet gauze veil and delicately dabbed the corners of her eyes. "You remind me of my poor David. I was always the _one woman on earth_, in his opinion. To the last, he was jealous of the slightest reference to you!"

"To _me_? Why should he have been?"

Mildred--for this was Saxham's faithless bride-elect of more than twenty years previously--swallowed her wrath with an effort, and went on with the mulish obstinacy of her type:

"Perhaps it was absurd. But men in love are unreasonable creatures, and David was perfectly mad where I was concerned. He worshipped me to the point of idolatry! He never could _quite_ believe that I did not regret my--my choice--that my heart did not sometimes escape from his keeping in dreams, and become yours again, Owen! He never _really_ cared for Patrine, because she has a look of you.... Absurd, considering that she was born two years after you disappeared into South Africa.... Though of course I could not truthfully say that I did not--think of you a great deal!"

It seemed to the silent man who heard, that Mildred offended against decency. His soul loathed her. She went on:

"Her brother--my darling boy who died--was the very image of David!" Her tone was even womanly and tender in speaking of the dead boy. "But Patrine--a year younger--Patrine is really wonderfully like you, with her commanding figure and almost Egyptian profile, those long eyes under straight eyebrows--and all those masses of dead-black hair!" As Saxham writhed under the category she gave out her irritating laugh again. "Ah!--I forgot! When Patrine was in Paris with Lady Beauvayse for the Big Week--Lady Beau took her to the Atelier Wiber--the famous hairdresser's establishment at 000, Rue de la Paix--where they specialise in _Chevelures des Teintes Moderne_--all the newest effects displayed by stylish mannequins--and really the change is astonishing--her sister Irma and I hardly knew Patrine when she came to see us at Kensington--looking superb, with hair--one might almost call it terra-cotta coloured--showing up her creamy-white skin."

"Do you tell me that Patrine has bleached her splendid hair and stained it with one of those vile dyes that are based on aniline--or Egyptian henna at the best?"

Mildred retorted acidly:

"It was a very expensive process.... Five hundred francs--but I understand that Lady Beauvayse was so good as to insist on paying Wiber's charges herself."

Saxham answered brusquely:

"I would have given ten times the money to know my niece's hair unspoiled. Whoever paid, the process will prove an expensive one to Patrine when she finds herself excruciated by headaches, or when the colour changes--as it will by-and-by!"

Mildred shrugged:

"She can have it re-dipped, surely? Or let it return to its original black!"

"There are many chemical arguments against human hair so altered returning to its original colour," came from Saxham grimly. "As these women who have made coiffures of orange, pink, crimson, blue and green, fashionable, had previously found to their cost. Do you not realise that from mishaps of this kind resulted the chromatically tinted heads one sees at public functions? Bizarre and strange in the electric lights, hideous in the sun."

"Ha, ha, ha!" Mildred's laugh rattled about the Doctor's ears like a shower of walnuts. "I shall certainly bring Patrine to call upon you, if her hair happens to turn peacock-green or pinky-crimson. I would not miss seeing your face for all the world! But seriously, my dear Owen, when a girl is as handsome as my girl and has no _dot_ to back her, she must make herself attractive and desirable to eligible men."

"By trying to make herself look like a Parisian _cocotte_, she renders herself neither attractive nor desirable--to the kind of man whom I should like to see married to my niece. The cleanly kind of man, with wholesome tastes, a sound constitution, and an upright character."

"My dear Owen, you might be composing an advertisement for a butler or a _chauffeur_!"

Mildred ostentatiously controlled a yawn as the Doctor continued:

"As to a provision for Patrine on her marriage, you know that I shall gladly give it. Of course, upon condition----"

"Yes, yes, I know what your condition would be!" Mildred's finger-tips, adorned with nails elaborately veneered and dyed, drummed a maddening little tattoo on the table-ledge. "That she marries the 'right kind of man, with wholesome tastes,' and all the rest of it. The question is--would Patrine be able to endure him? She is--let us say--more than a little difficult to get on with--and essentially an independent, up-to-date girl."

"If Patrine would have subdued her ideas about independence and given up this idea of taking a place as salaried companion, I would have welcomed her, and so would my wife!"

"Patrine is--as you are very well aware--something very different to a mere companion. She is reader and secretary to Lady Beauvayse. Her Club subscription is paid, she moves there amongst gentlewomen, and is treated at Berkeley Square exactly like a favoured guest. You should see the presents Lady Beauvayse absolutely showers upon her--and she gets all her expenses and a hundred a year."

Saxham was silent. Patrine might have had all this and much more, if she would have accepted the home he offered. Not only because she was his niece, but the girl was dear to him. His wife loved her, and in her strange, wild way Patrine returned some measure of Lynette's tenderness.

"She is worth loving," Lynette had told her husband. "She has a generous, brave, independent nature and a deep heart. She is not easily won because she is so well worth winning. Ah! if the Mother were only with us, how well she would understand and help Patrine!"

But Mildred had risen to depart. Saxham rose too, not without alacrity, and taking her offered hand, pressed it and let it fall to her side.

"Well, good-bye. My kind regards to Captain Dyneham." He referred to the second legal possessor of Mildred's once coveted charms. "When can I dine with you at Kensington, do you ask? I fear I have very few opportunities for sociality. Some day! ... Tell Patrine to come and see me. Half-past one o'clock to-morrow. Lunch after my scolding--and a chat with Lynette."

"You are extremely kind to Patrine." Mildred's tone was sweetly venomous. "But I fear just at present she has little time to spare. Men in love are so exacting. Dear me, what a feather-brained creature I am! ... Haven't I told you about Count von Herrnung?"

"You have told me nothing," said Saxham, "and you know it. Who and what is the man?"

Mildred said with a great air of dignity:

"He is a distinguished officer of the Prussian Flying Service, the son and heir of a high official in the German Foreign Office. He holds the rank of Count by courtesy. I assure you I never met a more agreeable young man."

"Even were he all that you say, and more, and even while I regard the German Army as a marvel of organisation and efficiency--I should not, knowing the type of man that is the product of their military system, desire my niece to marry a German officer."

Mildred mocked:

"'Marry'--who said anything about marriage? ... When they have not known each other for a month. Not"--her tone became sentimental--"that I am a disbeliever in love at first sight. No one could doubt that Patrine is attracted, and he--the Count"--she dropped her eyelids--"is simply too fearfully gone for words. Absolutely dead-nuts!"

"'Gone.' ... 'Dead-nuts.' ..."

"I give you my word. Entangled hopelessly. 'What a captive to lead in chains,' I said to Patrine--he is quite six feet in height or over, and has the most perfect features; simply magnificent eyes, the most fascinating manner, and the build of a Greek athlete. He is staying at the 'Tarlton,' and I must say Lady Beauvayse is extremely sympathetic. For since they came back from Paris together the Count has been taking Patrine about everywhere. She can hardly have had a glimpse of my gay girl.... Dinners, theatres, the opera, and heaven knows what else, they have crowded into the week!" The smiling speaker shrugged her ample shoulders. "To say nothing of cabaret suppers and dances. He even promises to take her to the famous 'Upas Club.' Wonderful, by all accounts. They say the French Regency came nowhere near it. Dancing in the Hall of the Hundred Pillars, a simply wonderful three A.M. supper, and champagne of the most expensive brands, served up in gold-mounted crystal jugs."

"Can it be possible? ..." broke from Saxham. "Are you mad, that you countenance this German in taking Patrine to such an infamous place?"

"'Infamous!' Really, Owen, your notions are too old-fashioned for anything." Her laughter broke out, and her chains and bangles jingled an accompaniment. "Do," she urged, "come out of your shell. Dine with us on Thursday. We have a box for the 'Ministers' Theatre. We'll go on, you and I, George and Irma, from there to the cabaret supper at the 'Rocroy.' We can't afford the 'Upas,' the subscription is too fearfully prohibitive. But the entertainment at the 'Rocroy' is really _chic_--the dancing is as good--everyone says--as they have it at Maxim's. Do come! Of course, you can trust us not to blab to your wife! Mercy! how severe you look!" Her tone changed, became wheedling, her made-up eyes languished tenderly. "Odd! how we poor, silly women prefer the men who bully us. Come! One chance more. Dine Thursday and see 'Squiffed' at the 'Ministers'--try a whiff of Paris at the 'Rocroy' after midnight, 'twill buck you up like nothing else--take my word! Won't you?"

"I will not!"

"Why not?"

"I have told you why not. Because these places are centres of corruption, schools for the inculcation and practice of vice in every form. Men and women, young or old, those who take part in or witness one of these loathsome dances, hot and reeking from the brothels and voodoo-houses of Cuba and the Argentine are equally degraded. I had rather see my niece Patrine dead and in her coffin than know her capable of appreciating such abominable exhibitions, pernicious in their effects, as I, and others of my profession have grave reason to know!--ruinous in their results to body, mind, and soul!"

"Intolerable!"

Her plump, middle-aged face was leaden grey beneath her violet veil as she screamed at him:

"You have insulted me! Horribly--abominably! ... How dare you tell me that I frequent infamous places, and encourage my daughter to visit schools of vice! And it is not for Irma you are so rottenly scrupulous, but for Patrine, your wife's favourite! Who will do as she pleases, and marry whom she prefers without 'by your leave' or with mine! She is a mule for self-will and obstinacy--another point of resemblance to yourself! ..."

He had recovered his stern self-possession. His face was granite as he said:

"I have not insulted you, but if you will set no example to your daughters in avoiding these evils, it is my duty to expostulate."

She reared like an angry cobra, then spat her jet of scalding venom.

"I take leave to think my present example quite harmless to Irma and Patrine. Now yours--of a few years ago--was certainly calculated to damage the bodily and worldly prospects of your son." She added, as Saxham silently put out his hand to touch the bell: "No! please don't ring. I know my way out. Good-morning.... Pray remember me to Bawne and your wife!"

*CHAPTER XVIII*

*SAXHAM PAYS*

Thus, having shot her bolt, Mildred departed. The Dop Doctor standing in the open doorway, watched the gaily-accoutred, middle-aged figure in the peg-top skirt and bouffante tunic of green taffeta patterned with a violet grape-vine, moving down the white-panelled corridor.

Saxham watched her out of sight before he shut the door and went back to his chair. There he sat thinking.... No one would disturb the Doctor until he touched his electric bell.

Ah! if the truth were told, not all of us find solace in the thought that in the niches of Heaven are safely stored our ancient idols. To Owen Saxham it was gall and verjuice to remember that for love of this woman, weak, vain, silly, spiteful, he, the man of intellect and knowledge, had gone down, quick, to the very verge of Hell.