*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:

“A l’instant, ou j’appelle l’ sergent d’ville!”

“He’s talking about sending for the police now!” She added hastily: “Don’t let him do that! Offer him a tip!”

The magic word must have been comprehended of the braided functionary. He ceased to fulminate. He waited, his avid eye upon the pair. The lean hatchety face of the aviator had flamed at Patrine’s suggestion. He said:

“Don’t you think I’d have tipped him in the beginning—if I’d had the wherewithal? But expenses have been frightful!—the waste lot with the shed I’ve stalled the machine in costs as much as a suite of rooms at a decent middle-class hotel would. Had to fork rent in advance too. Proprietor’s a German as well as a jerry-builder, and when I’ve paid his goo-goo girl for our coffee and rolls to-morrow morning”—the speaker exhibited a disc of shiny metal bearing the classical capped and oak-wreathed head of the Republic, value exactly twopence-halfpenny—“I’ll have just one of these blessed tin things left.”

“How rotten!” In the gilt metal vanity-bag, Patrine’s inseparable adjunct, lurked, in the company of a mirror, powder-puff, and note-book, a tiny white silk purse. In the purse nestled two plump British half sovereigns, the moiety of Patrine’s salary for the previous week. “Would you jump down my throat if I asked you to let me finance you?” she pleaded, an eager hand in the depths of the receptacle. “Why not?”

“Because I’m a decent man!” If he had been previously crimson he was now scarlet as a boiled lobster. “Thanks all the same, though! I can’t wait here, even to catch Davis… I must bike back to Drancy, where I’ve left the Bird—the machine—in the German’s shed… Not a soul to keep an eye on her! … My heart’s in my mouth when I think of what might hap—“ He bit off the end of the sentence and went on: “But if you’d be so awfully kind as to take charge of this, in case you … There’s a message written on it…” He offered her a soiled, bent card.

“I understand. If I should chance to come across your Davis… A little man … looking like a Welshman… But you haven’t told me whether he’s dark or fair!”

“Black as a crow,” he told her. “Not dressed like me!” His well-cut mouth began to twist upwards at the corners.

“Quite a swell, in a silk-faced frock-coat, white vest and striped accompaniments. A silk hat, too, rather curly brimmed, but still, a topper. I suppose a friend of the lady’s rented Davis the kit.”

“Of the lady’s? …” She remembered. “Yes, yes! Of course! … The German’s appendage… Why! … Look! … Those two people who have just passed the turn-stile at the other end of the Promenade… If there’s anything in description, here comes Davis with the goo-goo girl!”

“By—gum! You’ve nailed me the pair of them.” As the aviator’s long strides bore him down in the direction of the little sallow, black-avised mechanic in the capacious silk-faced frock-coat, and his high-bosomed, florid, flaxen-haired enchantress, and before the moustached guardian of the Promenade could renew his indignant protest, Patrine had dropped the little sovereign-purse in his deep, rapacious hand. And at that instant the music ended with a crashing succession of barbaric chords. The Sao Paulo dance was done.

“Merci millefois, Madame! …”

Patrine turned from the hireling’s thanks to see the high head and powerful square shoulders of von Herrnung forging towards her, towering above the polyglot, variegated crowd. He hailed her with:

“So you met a friend? Is that why I found myself deserted?”

She answered coldly:

“I did not desert you—and I did not meet a friend.”

His face, still suffused with a purplish flush, pouched and baggy about the eyes, told of the maelstrom of unhealthy excitement the dance of the jaguars in the jungle had set whirling in his brain. She guessed that he had taken advantage of their separation to descend into the ball-room, and that as one of the spectators in the front rank he had revelled in the final thrill. He persisted:

“Was? But what means it? I have lost you… I think you must have gone down into the ball-room after your friend… I follow and you are not there. I come back to find you… Who was that dirty bounder I saw you talking to?”

“He wasn’t a dirty bounder!” His rudeness enraged her. “He was a nice, clean, first-class, top-hole, plucky English boy!”

He sneered:

“‘Boy’ … Men of forty are boys, in the mouths of you English ladies. You borrow the term from women of the street-walking class.”

“Then I’ll call him a man. The best kind of man going! English—from the top of his nice head to the very tips of his toes.”

“How can you tell if he was not a friend of yours? What do you know of him?” He fixed his eyes compellingly on hers.

She answered:

“Nothing but that he flew the Channel yesterday—with Davis—to test his invention—and he has got to be on the wing for home at four.”

“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.