She quivered, cast a look about; saw the ugly emotion under which he laboured reflected in every face within her range of vision, as round after round of plaudits rose to the roof of the pavilion, escaping through the wide-open spaces between its gilded, rose-twined pillars into the night. The rafters vibrated with demands for a repetition of the popular sensation. The dancers accepted the encore.
If von Herrnung beckoned now, asking Patrine to go down with him amongst the acrid exhalations of that cockpit of variegated lights, thronged with excited men and strangely-bedizened women, rent by devastating emotions, drunk with strange excitements, would Patrine say Yes or No? ...
_Ouf!_ but it was hot. How thick the air was with those illusion perfumes. And from whence was that cool breeze blowing that suddenly freshened the heavy air? ...
*CHAPTER XVI*
*THE WIND OF JOY*
Patrine drew back from the edge of the promenade. A stout, swarthy Frenchman, a Southerner evidently, whose full brown face streamed with little rills of perspiration, stepped nimbly into her vacated place. His female companion instantly took his. The same movement was repeated--the packed bodies seemed to melt before her. In a few more steps she had merged from the crowd, upon the outer edge of the elevated promenade.
There was another velvet railing there, and steps leading down to the promenade upon the ground-level. Against the background of starlit sky and illuminated gardens stood the tall figure of a man. He was broad-shouldered and lightly built, the poise and balance of his figure admirable. But for the gleam of his living eyes in his tanned face, and the movements of his head as he turned it from side to side, evidently seeking somebody, he might have been a statue of Mercury cast in light-hued bronze.
For he wore loose, waist-high leggings strapped at the ankles, and a belted gabardine of thin light brown material, while a cap with an upturned brim and ear-flaps dangled from his sunburnt hand. And a uniformed official, all lacquered moustaches and gold-laced blue cloth, stood gesticulating a few paces from him, keen on defending from so unceremonious an intruder the integrity of the Upper Promenade.
"Monsieur cannot possibly descend into the ball-room ... the costume of Monsieur is not appropriate. It offends against good taste. It outrages the proprieties.... It is _peu convenable_ even that Monsieur should be here."
Patrine heard the protest, saw it driven home by swift expressive Gallic gestures, caught a gleam of mirth in the eyes of the oddly-garbed intruder, and the quirk of a smile at the corners of his mouth. No doubt the suggestion of the proprieties in connection with the traditions of Mabille had evoked it. She liked his face; it was lean and hard and rather hatchety, with a brave outlook of clear light eyes under the marked eyebrows, thick and straight and silvery-fair against his sunburnt skin. To her woman's eyes, Fatigue was stamped upon it and anxiety, and a kind of rueful impatience, as he apologised for the necessity of the intrusion in fragmentary but excellently accentuated French. He came in search of a friend, who was here and must be found; it was imperative...
"There is to-morrow!--there is always to-morrow!" the official stated with a wave.
"That's just the point.... To-morrow! ..." The stranger's forehead was ploughed with lines of anxiety. He spoke in English now--the well-bred, modern, clipped English of the public school and the University. "No! you don't understand"--for the official had vigorously disclaimed all knowledge of the strange, barbarous tongue in which the other addressed him. "And I don't believe I'd ever make you. If I could only hammer into you what sort of a hat I'm in!"
He knitted his brows; pulled himself together for a crowning effort. Patrine spoke, not as a stranger yielding to a sudden, helpful impulse, but quite simply, with a little, joyful catching of her breath:
"Could I explain for you, do you suppose?"
"A--thanks! You're awfully good!"
He turned to her eagerly, if with a certain embarrassment.
"If you would.... There is a man here I have to get word to. And--what French I have is simply technical.... You hardly find it in modern dictionaries--the argot of the engine-shop and the Flying School."
"Now I understand...." She smiled in his perplexed face, drinking in deep breaths of the fresh fragrant air that blew about them as they stood together behind the thick wall of bodies that hid the cockpit from their view. A deep dimple von Herrnung had never seen showed low down in one of her pale cheeks. Their whiteness was slightly tinged with delicate pale rose. And her eyes had lost their brilliant enamelled hardness. They shone like dusky stars as she went on: "Now I know why I thought of wide green spaces and a breeze blowing to me over gorse and heather as I looked at you. Sub-conscious memories of Hendon and Brooklands and Upavon. For you're a Flying Man!"
"Just that!" His ruefulness was banished. "And now you know how I come to be in Paris with the clothes I stand up in and not another rag.... Two of us flew the Channel yesterday morning.... If the weather holds decent, we should be on the wing again by four A.M. And my mechanic's given me the slip. To say he's taken French leave would be appropriate under the circumstances. Left a line--the cool--beggar!--to say I'd find him here."
"Too bad!" she said, as fresh furrows dug themselves into the tanned forehead. "Not fair to leave you in the cart like that. No wonder you followed--hot upon his track."
"Combed the whole place--everywhere they'll let me in. But my aviator's kit's against me. I've seen some rummy get-ups. But they draw the line at Carberry's overalls."
One hand rested easily on his hip, in the other hand he swung the eared cap with goggles. A pedestal in the moonlight would have suited him. It occurred to her to ask:
"What was he like--your runaway mechanic?"
"I hardly ... Oh! ... Little black-avised Welshman--barely tips the scale at eight stone. Has to be a light-weight, because I weigh all of eleven. And with the hovering-gear--but that can't interest you."
"Indeed it does. What of the hovering-gear?"
His face darkened and hardened. He said:
"It's an invention of mine. And after no end trying--our own people at Whitehall simply wouldn't have anything to do with me--the chiefs of the French Service Aeronautique consented to give it a test."
"Sporting of them, wasn't it?"
He agreed:
"No end sporting. So I bucked the tiger over the Channel with Davis--to find that an officer and mechanic of the S. A. were told off to try the hoverer over the selected area. For us to engineer the thing ourselves wasn't '_l'etiquette militaire_.' That's the French for Government red-tape."
"Bother etiquette! I'm beginning to sympathise with Davis!"
His vexation broke up in laughter.
"That's what _she_ did. She sympathised with Davis and carried him off here."
Patrine said, a light breaking in on her:
"Why, of course, there would be a girl.... He'd hardly come to a place like this alone, would he?"
Some query in his look made her add hastily:
"What was she like?"
"Like.... The girl who's carried off Davis? ..." He reflected a moment. "Pretty and plump and fluffy, with a pair of goo-goo eyes! She's daughter or niece or something"--he boggled the explanation rather--"to the German chap who hired us the hangar at Drancy--if you can give that name to a ramshackle shed in a waste building-lot! And Davis--thundering good man, but once on a spree..." He whistled dismally. "If I could only get my claws on him! ..."
Here the uniformed official returned to the charge:
"Monsieur has found his friend--Monsieur has explained the situation. To enter the _Salon de Danse_ with Madame is not permissible--in the costume Monsieur displays. No doubt Madame will understand!"
Patrine said, with a slight catch in her breath, as though some drops of chilly pleasant perfume had been suddenly sprayed on her:
"He supposes ... he thinks ... that I'm ... your friend!"
"I'll explain." He reddened, turning to the official, saying in the French of the British schoolboy, laborious, devoid of colloquialisms:
"_Monsieur, vous n'avez pas compris. Madame elle--elle n'etes qu'une etrangere. Pour mon ami, je ne lui vois. Si vous permettre d'entrer, peut-etre----_"
"_Rototo! Voyez, man blousier, j'connais bien la sorte! Sufficit! Assez! Ca m' fait suer, comprends?_" The gold-braided arm described a magnificent sweep, the large white kid-covered hand indicated remote distance--"_Sortez!_ ..."
The Briton, thus invited to retire, looked at Patrine.
"I can't quite follow, but it's plain he's telling me to hook it. The rest is--pretty--strong?"
She nodded, biting her lip.
"Frightfully rude. Not that I know much Paris slang. But a friend of mine--" She broke off to listen, as from under the functionary's waxed moustache rattled another sentence: