He smiled his whimsical smile and went on:
"A day or two after the burial of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his morganatic partner, murdered by some fanatics among the Greater Serbs, a huge majority among the German military and naval officers doing duty in their Colonies, or on political service in Africa, were recalled by Wireless. Leave has been stopped. Rolling-stock in inconceivable masses is being concentrated on the greater strategic railways, while the official and semi-official Press prates and gabbles of peace and neighbourly goodwill!" He shrugged. "Things were safer when they yelled and foamed in convulsions of Anglophobia. Then one doubted.... Now one is sure! ... Ah, I thought I wasn't mistaken. Here's Sherbrand coming down!"
*CHAPTER XXVIII*
*THE GOD FROM THE MACHINE*
The dazzling turquoise of the sky was now streaked with milky bands of haziness. Dappled golden-white cloudlets at the zenith made what is known as mackerel sky. Trails of rounded stratus floated low in the east and south-east. Long shadows of hangars, pylons, semaphore and electric searchlight-stations, stretched over the turf from westwards, crossed by perambulatory shadows of people moving about. These became stationary, betokening that popular interest was newly awakened. Umbrellas and sticks flourished towards the sky. Bawne gave a little crow of delight as the whitish-brown, shining shape of the monoplane dived down out of the empyrean, travelling with a bold, beautiful swooping glide that took away the gazer's breath.
"Look, oh look!" Bawne gasped, leaning against Patrine. Now her tardy interest was genuinely awakened. Reaching the end of its glide, the monoplane had regained the horizontal position. As she flattened out and hung well-nigh motionless in mid-air with the sunlight beating on and drenching her fragile, lacy structure, she was a thing of beauty and of wonder. The humming of her tractor came to you mingled with the buzzing of her gyroscopic hoverer, like the incessant vibration of living, sentient wings.
She seemed to tire of hanging between earth and heaven, ceased buzzing, tilted a wing sharply and began to frolic after it as a kitten runs after its tail on a hearthrug, or as a swallow gambols on a chase after gnats, always turning towards the West, whilst her greyish shadow danced and skipped upon the gold-white cloud-surfaces to eastwards a long way below her, like the ghost of an aeroplane. All the time she was gobbling up distance, steadily descending. She presently reversed her sun-worshipping tactics, dived, and spiralled, banking, from west to east. You saw plainly the helmeted heads and slightly hunched shoulders of the pilot at the controls and the mechanic strapped in the forward cockpit.
Soon she hovered again and swooped, so suddenly that Patrine nipped Bawne's shoulder, saying "Great Scott!" under her breath. Another long sweeping glide brought her close to the green turf of the aerodrome. Then, with an adroit flexing of the wing-tips, she balanced, flattened, and landed lightly within the huge white circle, rocking a little on her tyred wheels.
The man with the stop-watch checked the mechanism, the bearded man with the big binoculars lowered and closed them, scribbled in a memorandum-book and came down the judge's stand. The Bird of War's mechanic stayed in his place, the pilot unhitched his body-strap, pushed up his goggled visor, threw a long leg over the fuselage and jumped lightly to the ground. He staggered as he reached it, recovered himself and stood breathing quickly, as a man overcoming giddiness, or other physical sensation of distress.
Tall, young, and lightly built, with long active limbs and a physique suggestive of youth and courage and enterprise, as he stood motionless, his eared and goggled cap now in hand, the play of sunlight upon his thin brown waterproof gabardine and overalls made him look like a statue of Mercury wrought in pale new bronze. And with a lifting of her sick heart as though it had suddenly spread wings, and soared into a region of unlimited space and glorious freedom, Patrine recognised her Flying Man of the Jardin des Milles Plaisirs.
From what airt, of what world unknown, did it blow, that cool, fragrant wind that then and always heralded for Patrine his coming? It took her by surprise; lapped her delicately about; enveloped her from head to foot in its pure invisible waves. The hot, sore places in her heart were bathed and healed, the deep caverns filled, the little thirsty rock-pools set awash and brimming. When the sough of it was no longer in her ears or the tug and flutter of it among the folds of her garments; when she ceased to be conscious of the cool resilient pressure upon cheek and neck and forehead--her brief sweet hour of joy was over. Sherbrand had gone away again.
"_Cela ira-t-il, monsieur? Je suis pret a faire une nouvelle demonstration si vous n'etes pas satisfait._"
His clear, strong voice speaking in laborious public school French gave her a delicious shock of pleasure. He was addressing the stout, bearded Frenchman who, accompanied by the thinner man who had timed Sherbrand by the stop-watch, now walked across the turf to shake the aviator's hand. As Sherbrand spoke, he drew a white handkerchief from the sleeve of his gabardine and wiped from the corners of his mouth some little blobs of foam, slightly bloodstained. The stout, friendly Frenchman glanced at him, and uttered an exclamation. Sherbrand shook his head in vigorous protest and laughed, repeating his offer to demonstrate again. Upon which the bearded man, who had also a moustache with thick, stiff waxed ends, and wore a large checked-pattern summer suit with a white drill waistcoat, a low collar and a necktie with flowing ends, and was topped with a high-crowned straw hat that suggested Trouville in mid-season, negatived the proposal with a vivacious gesture, pouring forth a stream of words:
"_Au contraire, Monsieur, je suis convaincu que vous avez une idee superbe. Nous vous avons observe avec la lunette Zeiss, pendant votre vol, et nous avons constate le temps tres soigneusement: vous avez maintenu le bruit et la stabilite pendant cinq minutes de plus que les vingt-cinq minutes stipulees. Permettez moi comme une simple formalite de voir votre altimetre?_"
"By all means!" Sherbrand returned.
They went back to the aeroplane together, and Sherbrand reached over and unhooked the altimeter from a board in the pilot's cockpit, and the bearded man examined it, and then cordially shook hands.
"Within two days, at latest. Possibly sooner!" Patrine heard the straw-hatted, bearded gentleman say in English, pronounced with a strong French accent. "Believe me," he added, "I shall represent most strongly the usefulness of your invention to the Chief of the Etat de l'Aviation. _Au revoir, Monsieur, et encore mes felicitations!_"
Then he went away with the small dark man who had used the stop-watch, and who carried the Zeiss binoculars slung in their case.
During this business interview Patrine had felt Bawne panting and wriggling close beside her, like an excited, but well-mannered fox-terrier waiting to be whistled for. But Sherbrand, though he glanced at the boy smilingly, had turned aside to engage in conversation with Saxham, and the Chief Scout, whom Sherbrand saluted in orthodox Scout fashion, flushing red under the clear sunburn that darkened his fair skin.
"He's one of Us!" Bawne whispered to Patrine, his own young face alight with pleasure. "He was Scoutmaster of a troop in the North, he told me, and I know he must have been a splendid one. He's the kind of chap who'd be prepared for anything. Don't you think he looks like that?"
Patrine did not answer. She was feeling "cheap," as Lady Beauvayse would have expressed it. She had put the man out of her thoughts because she had taken it for granted that Fanshaw's instructor could not be a gentleman. Now, as she watched Sherbrand in conversation with the elder man, his manner of quiet, well-bred deference, mingled with a pleasant courtesy, showed her beyond all doubt that his place was above the salt.
He had looked towards her, when he had smiled at Bawne, and his glance had swept over her without recognition. She would have known him anywhere, while he----! She had forgotten her preposterously-coloured hair.
How sweet the breeze was, bringing from the west the smell of strawberry-fields and red and white clover. Yet she had not noticed it until now. Her mood had changed. She had put away the thing she most hated to remember. She felt almost like the Patrine of two days ago.
"Miss Saxham!"
It was von Herrnung's voice speaking behind her, and with a shock of loathing horror she remembered all. She turned to see his tall figure approaching. The first impression was that he was ill; the next, that he was furiously angry. His florid complexion had bleached to an ugly, greenish pallor, even the blue of his eyes had faded to a curious lilac hue. He carried in his gloved left hand, and with evident care, a flat strapped wallet of brown leather, fastened with two Bramah locks and a lock-strap. He said to Patrine in a jarring voice of resentment and impatience: