"Papers inside!" he said to himself. Something quite hard was under the leather at the corners, perhaps the thinnest of metal plates. Its contact with the boy's body seemed to sober von Herrnung's exultation. He dropped Bawne unceremoniously, and straightened himself again.
"How much petrol has been used?" he asked hastily of Davis, going over to the Bird and mounting on the landing-carriage to look at the gauges. "Because when I fly I never take risks. You will have to fill up the tank again. Do you hear, my fellow?"
"If Mr. Sherbrand orders me," Davis spat out another piece of grass, "dessay I shall do it!" He eyed von Herrnung with surly disapproval as he craned over the Bird's fuselage, while audibly commenting to an acquaintance who had strolled up:
"Sheer blinders, I call 'em, these ere Fritzies! Walk into Buckingham Pallis next minute and ask to look into the Privy Puss. 'Ope the Governor comes back before 'e gits Nosey Parkerin' into the 'orizontal 'overing gear! Perish me if I ever met a bloke with such a nerve! Watto, old sonny?" He addressed himself to the boy. "Ain't you feelin' up to the posh?"
"I am quite all right, thank you!" Bawne responded, while his heart bumped against his ribs. In his brain words and sentences kept forming:
"I'm only a little chap. And this is--a Big thing! Bigger than the Chief expected, perhaps! And he said he'd be back in half an hour." Half an hour meant thirty minutes. He glanced at the big round white-faced clock above the entrance of the cafe restaurant. More than fifteen minutes of the half-hour had gone.
To stick to the big, brutal German was his--Bawne's--Secret Mission. And the inspiring, uplifting voice that thousands of boy-hearts thrill to all the big world over had said to him:
"Quit yourself like a man!"
*CHAPTER XXX*
*THE REAPING*
To Patrine, when the shadow of the familiar figure of the Doctor mingled with hers upon the dry green grass, and Saxham's voice called her by her name, it was as though his presence had a weight that physically oppressed her, and his scrutiny seared her flesh like the approach of white-hot iron.
Through her mind passed swift sentences: "_Yet another of us has disgraced him! My father and mother are not the only traitors of our name!_" In the rawness of her mental anguish every sense was unnaturally exaggerated. The ticking of Saxham's watch, that the furious beating of her heart could not drown, tormented by its iteration. And worst of all, was the consciousness of defilement in the physical sense.
"Did not your mother give you my message?"
Always pale, her pallor did not demand particular attention, save that under their ruddy salve the edges of her lips showed white. She answered, forcing the lips to smile, compelling her eyes to meet Saxham's.
"About coming to see you?" She remembered and drew from her gilt-chain vanity bag the letter she had not posted: "This was written to you to-day. Then I thought I would have been able to look in at Harley Street, and in the end----"
"In the end you neither paid the visit nor posted the excuse. Well, be more considerate in future to those who love you. Sincere, clean love does not grow on every gooseberry bush, my dear!"
The curt speech, made in the Doctor's brusquest tone, conveyed to Patrine an impression of exquisite kindness. So many boons, so many benefits had been conferred in that grim, curt way. She had wept and would not weep again, but her hard bright eyes grew misty as she thanked him, and asked after Lynette, with a touch of wistfulness that recalled to the Doctor that unforgettable time when greedy Death had threatened to rob him of his joy. He answered her cheerfully, and they found themselves chatting of familiar, everyday matters across the gulf that yawned between. And then, warned by some swift change of expression in her face, Saxham glanced up to see Sherbrand approaching.
"Doctor!" he called. "Sorry to interrupt, but would you listen a minute?"
The tall, lightly-built, lightly moving figure came swinging towards them. He still carried the eared cap with the goggled visor, his thick, silvery-blonde hair was darkened at the temples with the dampness generated under the close covering of waterproof. His light grey-blue eyes were smiling, yet there was a pucker of anxiety between his eyebrows, as he put von Herrnung's case.
"So," he ended, "instead of taking a second flight in the Bird with me as we arranged, would you trust your boy to this foreign crack who's in a hole for a passenger? He is Captain von Herrnung of the German Flying Service--winner of the two-days' flight from Hanover to Paris in April--a famous run!" He added, "I need hardly say that with such a record as von Herrnung holds you cannot be apprehensive of any rashness or neglect on his part. But I'll own I would rather take Bawne up another day myself. Still, von Herrnung----"
"I am aware of the reputation held by the person you mention. I am going now to speak to him."
The Doctor's face was devoid of all expression. But he battled, as he spoke, with a masterful desire to forbid Bawne the expedition. To assert parental authority on this point would have been the mode of dealing approved by one of the two men who dwelt within the Dop Doctor. The other Saxham said "Hold!"
Dare you place your paternal love, that other Saxham asked--between your son and his duty? Because it would be so easy to do it, is the reason why you should refrain! The Doctor had walked a few paces towards the object of his troubled reflections. He wheeled abruptly, returned, and presented Sherbrand to his niece.
A faint blush rose in Patrine's white cheeks as her eyes met those of the tall young aviator. They looked at her without any sign of recognition, and the conviction, "_He has forgotten!_" shot stingingly across her mind. "_He did not think me worth remembering_" came next. And then she could have laughed, recalling that she had dismissed him from her own thoughts on the discovery of his connection with Fanshaw's. She had made so certain that a teacher of Flying couldn't be a gentleman.
Now, face to face with him again, in his upright easy bearing, in his straight and fearless regard, in the pleasant well-bred voice that addressed her in a brief conventional sentence or so, she read his patent of gentlehood.
From whatever root it sprang, the flower was noble. Her swift eyes shot a glance at the bigger figure in grey. What a hoggish knight of the dunghill, what a high-born clown had she not distinguished by her choice and selection. The smile of scorn that curved her mouth was suddenly banished by the sudden recollection of Bawne.
"Uncle Owen, you have not yet told Mr. Sherbrand whether Bawne may go up again or not. I am sure--if you won't think me--if you don't mind my saying so!--that he has had enough for to-day! I think it would be better if you would not----"
It was not the deep warm voice of Patrine's characteristic utterance, but a weaker, thinner voice that hesitated and faltered and trailed away. It recalled nothing to Sherbrand. He looked at her and transferred his gaze to Saxham, who asked:
"Does this German officer intend climbing to any high altitude, or perpetrating anything in the nature of a display?"
Sherbrand explained:
"He does not want to go higher than three thousand. Just to try the hoverer, regarding which some business friends of his are bitten with curiosity. My mechanic is not able to go up with him, and he wants a light-weight passenger. He is over sixteen stone himself, and the Bird has been built to carry me with Davis. I calculated her wing-area to----"
Sherbrand travelled into the realm of technicalities, using terms that were Volapuk and Esperanto to Patrine. He had supple, finely-shaped hands, and used them as he talked with vivid illustrative gestures.
"So," he ended, "as your plucky youngster asked to go, it seemed a way out of the difficulty, provided you weren't dead against the thing. Of course we'll swadd the little chap in a sweater or so under the pneumatic jacket. It'll be a bit parky, even at three thousand, now the sun's beginning to down."
He added:
"I'll see to the strapping myself. You may rely upon it, Doctor."
Saxham said with a look of kindness at the handsome face with the clear candid eyes:
"I am sure of that!" He added, mastering that inward impulse: "I shall not forbid the flight if Bawne is set on it. But first, I must speak to him!"
And the great form with the stern thoughtful face and scholar's stoop moved across the greensward, followed by the tall young figures of Sherbrand and Patrine. Of the two, the man was by a bare inch the taller. This Patrine realised in a swift side-glance. Certain featural characteristics of him, personal impressions received half-unconsciously, retained their clear sharpness then and for many days....
The silvery-yellow hair toning into the pale brown skin. The powerful sweep of the brows over eyes set flush with their large orbits, prominent, brilliant, mobile as the eyes of a bird of flight. The nose, arched and jutting like a kite's beak, with large sensitive nostrils, the somewhat sunken cheek and the sharply-angled jaw, the little ear and the rounded skull superbly set upon the full muscular neck rising out of the collar of the gabardine, made up a portrait upon which some happy woman might well dote and dream.