"I do not doubt it!" said Saxham. He breathed more freely, and his face had regained its natural hue.
"I reminded him," went on the Chief, "that our Army and our Fleet are indebted for thousands of the finest men, morally and physically speaking, to Reformatories and Industrial Schools and Homes. 'Think of the character borne by Barnardo's boys,' I told him, 'and grind the scorpion lie to pulp under your boot-heel, whenever and wherever you find it cocking up its damnable tail!'"
"So he went back," said Saxham, "cheered and strengthened by your sympathy, as--other men have been before now!"
"So he went back to the College, fortified by my bit of nervous English, and worked at his troop for all he was worth. Raked in seventy in the first month, and kept on raking. He is dandy at drill and organisation, is Sherbrand. When he left the College they mustered three hundred strong." The speaker struck his stick upon the turf and said emphatically: "How it grows!--how the Movement spreads and gathers and ramifies! Do you know Saxham, that there are moments in my life when I am tempted to be proud. When rank upon rank of young, fresh, fearless faces with bright eyes are turned to me. When thousands of active, lithe, healthy young bodies run out into the open and rally about the Chief Scout."
There was a mist in the bright eyes that his manliness was not ashamed of.
"Years ago, when the officer in command of a certain beleaguered garrison was doing his best to defend it, a great Fear came upon him in the watches of a particularly anxious night. Perhaps you will guess what I mean, Saxham? The man had not slept for more weeks than I like to remember, and the hours of rest in the day-time were hot-eyed staring horrors of insomnia. He was--up against it! The shrunken lids would not shut down over his bursting eyeballs, and his jaws were clamped so that he could not yawn. Then, on this night, his Fear rose up and mopped and mowed at him, and it had the kind of face that madhouse doctors and keepers know. He wasn't ordinarily a 'fearful man,' like Kipling's immortal Bengali, but now he was horribly, sickeningly afraid!"
"I guessed it," said Saxham. "I realised what you were suffering, but I did not dare to hint my knowledge to you. There was no danger of madness. But you were certainly on the verge of mental and physical breakdown."
"And being in such desperate case," said the other, "I prayed to God in my extremity. I promised Him if He would help me to carry out my duty to Him, as to my earthly superiors, and those men and women and children who looked to me as their protector and guide, that I would one day, if He spared me, build Him a big Temple, made of the little temples that are the work of His Hands."
"And to-day the Temple is a reality!"
"A grand reality. East, West, North, and South, it spreads and widens and towers. It is built of boys. Clean-limbed, clean-minded, self-respecting fellows, scorning vices, eager for service, sensitive in Honour, chivalrous, patriotic, keen for Truth and Right. It frightens me, Saxham, when I think what a leaven is working through these boys of mine, potential fathers of sons in the ripeness of Time, for the ultimate regeneration of this vicious, degenerate world. It makes me understand how near old Coleridge got to the live heart of things when he wrote the _Ancient Mariner_. The service of Almighty God is the love of your fellow-man. But why to me, and not to another worthier, should God have given this wonderful, glorious thing to bring about? ..."
"Because you are worthy of doing His work for Him. Has He not used you as His instrument in my own case? Should I not own to this, I who owe everything to you?"
The other laid a hand on the great shoulder of the Dop Doctor.
"If ever you owed me anything, Saxham, you paid me long ago!"
He was silent a moment and said in a lighter tone: "I am not quite clear yet as to how you met my whilom Scoutmaster."
"Our acquaintance dates from a cross-Channel flight he made in the end of June."
"I know." The Chief prodded the turf with his walking-stick. "A French pilot-officer of their Service Aeronautique, a certain Commandant Raymond, who flew here in the contest for the Ivor International Cup in May, had heard of Sherbrand and his inventions from Lamond of the Central Flying School. He took a shine to the aerial stabiliser and got his Chiefs to give it a trial. That came off on the Grand Prix Sunday, when Paris went wild over the Sarajevo affair."
"And scenting War in the air," said Saxham, "Sherbrand promptly took wing for England without waiting for the decision of the judges who were present at the test."
"Did he? He has keen scent."
"Better now," said Saxham laughing, "than when he came to me--on the recommendation of an old patient--suffering from an aggravated form of nasal catarrh. He had had it at intervals for years, and suspected it to be owing to what he described, in the language of the engineering-shop, as "a defect in the air-intake." He proved to be right--and I sent him into the Hospital, where Berry Boyle performed a slight minor operation which removed the trouble, and left him capitally fit. Then, when he came out of the Hospital, he found a letter from the French Consul waiting at his office----"
The Chief interpolated:
"Ah yes. The aerial stabiliser had gained the suffrages of Messieurs the Chiefs of the Aeronautique Francaise. I hope M. Jourdain's report to his Government will induce them to buy the patent. For, judging by the interest that the representatives of another Power seem to take in----"
The Chief broke off. The smiling lines about his eyes and mouth had vanished as he queried: "Who is the lady my Scout over there is squiring? A superbly-shaped young woman, with hair of the fashionable terra-cotta shade. But for the hair, I should have said it was your niece, Patrine."
Saxham's eyes followed the direction of the Chief's glance. He said, and his face looked hard as a mask of stone:
"Your memory for faces is correct as usual. The lady with the terra-cotta hair is my late brother's daughter, Patrine."
The Chief's familiar whistle filled in a space of silence, with a pensive little fragment of Delius' _Spring Song_, while Saxham's frown grew deeper and his jaw thrust out more angrily. Then the well-known voice said:
"I am sorry that Miss Patrine has been tempted to follow the fashion. But I regret still more her choice of friends! I refer to the German officer in whose company your niece arrived here, in a yellow Darracq car, about half-an-hour ago." The speaker made sure, with a rapid glance to right and left, that no listener was standing near them, and added: "I know that I may trust you as myself in any private or official matter. Between ourselves frankly, I am here to-day for the purpose of--keeping an eye on this particular man!"
The Doctor's vivid blue eyes darted rapier-points at the other, from caves that had suddenly been dug about them. The General went on:
"The man himself is no common spy, though he may on occasion act as an agent or post-box for Secret Intelligence communications. He is an extraordinarily able young officer, a squadron captain in their Field Flying Service, with some astonishing records to his credit, though he was an Engineer Lieutenant in 1907 when he came to England as chauffeur-officer attached to the Kaiser's Personal Staff. For a comprehensible reason his superiors desired him to improve his knowledge of the topography of the British Isles. He certainly did so, but"--the keen eyes twinkled--"the record runs accomplished by von Herrnung with the All Highest as passenger, were not unattended, or unobserved by us. That he is well-born and well-looking is undeniable, and these advantages, with other social gifts, may easily attract your niece, like any other of Eve's daughters. But to say the least it is inadvisable that she should encourage the advances of this man, or of any other German officer,--when the next forty-eight hours may see Britain and Germany at grips in War."
"That is your opinion?"
"It is my plain, unvarnished opinion, speaking as one of those who are admitted behind the scenes. Not that I am infallible, but the Signs and the Tokens all lead one way." He lifted his lean brown hand and pointed eastwards. "For years they have been making ready, but now--what a frenzy of ordered preparation. What secret councils, what reiteration of orders, what accumulations of stores, what roaring of electric furnaces--I'd give my little finger to know what chemical they're making in huge bulk at the Badische Anilin-und-Soda Fabrik, and hundreds of other dye and bleaching-powder works in Germany and Austria!--every one backed up by the German Imperial State or the Dual Monarchy on the understanding that at the signal, they are to turn to and turn out--what? Benzine for phenol, phenol for picric, and toluene for Super-Explosive, that's understood. But this stuff puzzles me. Do you see the Senile Arc in my eyes yet, Saxham? It must be that I'm getting old!"