Chapter V: Mr. Craighouse of New York, Satirist 287 (5)

"And who the deuce may he be?"

"The cat--_le voici!_"

He surveyed the feline with an air of tolerant gravity. "Do you think Louis may object if I remain for supper?"

"Ah--but no!" She laughed gaily, but a look of doubt changed the expression of her features in a moment. "But my uncle--he never has any one in the house. For many years I have lived alone with him. Only when the curé comes, perhaps once a month, does any one visit the mill. My uncle is very surly, a perfect bear, and often he gets drunk as well."

The young man raised his absurdly light eyebrows. "A pleasant relative, mademoiselle. And, pray, what is his grievance against his fellowmen?"

"I know not, monsieur. All week he works alone, except when he takes the flour to sell, but on Sundays he always goes to church and leads the chanting. He was taught Latin by his father, who was a gravedigger in Paris and learned it from the tombstones. So on Sundays my uncle, from his seat in the chancel, performs the chants in such a terrible voice that almost always some children scream with terror, and once Madame La Comtesse fainted."

The aviator relit his pipe, which had gone out, but did not remove his eyes from hers.

"Once," went on the girl, plucking a blade of grass and making a knot with it about her finger, "two villagers, Simon Barit and Armand Cartier, were requested by the curé, who is very small and weak, to tell my uncle to sing no more. Ah monsieur, it was terrible!"

"Yes?"

"My uncle he is a very strong man; he threw Simon Barit into the stream, and the other he chased almost to the village."

"And so, like the mill-stream, he goes on forever?"

"Ah, yes, monsieur, like the war--forever. Listen!"

A great voice, sonorous as that of the fabled giant calling for his evening meal of an Englishman, rent the air. The October wind seemed to quiver to its lowest note, and the water racing over the chute was quieter than it had been for hours.

"I must go, monsieur. It is his supper he wants."

"And may I not come too?"

"Ah--but no! I am frightened."

"Of me?"

She raised her wide brown eyes to his, and her eyelashes, which so jealously guarded those guileless depths, parted grudgingly, revealing to him their full beauty.... Another roar shattered the air, and she laid her hand upon his wrist. "You must not come," she said earnestly. "He would throw you into the stream."

His melancholy face gave way to a boyish grin. "If he did, mademoiselle, my ghost would haunt him forever. All night it would sing outside his window--and, in truth, my singing is no less terrible than his."

There was another roar, followed by a reference to the untimely decease of ten thousand devils.

Without a word, she reached for her book, and, throwing her shawl over her left shoulder, hurried away. The aviator watched her girlish figure with its unconscious grace, then, turning about, he strolled to the machine, and, sitting on the side of the fuselage, surveyed its bullet-punctured carcass.

"Five kilometers and a little better," he soliloquized in English, "and a doubtful prospect of a meal.... Contrast that with what the gods offer here--a cosy fire, coffee, eggs and chips, I warrant, and the daintiest of little maids--to say nothing of a musical uncle with an amiable propensity for throwing visitors into the stream. By Jove, it is chilly.... Over in dear old England they'll be roasting nuts and telling ghost-stories to-night."

The fast-thickening shadows deepened into the blackness of an October night; the wind grew quieter, but there was a bite in the air that made him draw his fur collar about his ears.

"What excellent French the little lady uses," he went on. "I wonder who her parents were, and why the deuce she has to live with this ogre. And what eyes! Enough to make one invent new songs of Araby just to see them sparkle and soften.... One moment sad, another tender--and always lovely. Steady, the Air Force--you're becoming sentimental."

He looked at the battered machine and shook his head; a solitary raindrop lit on his face and slid down its surface like a tear.

A belated gust of wind smote his face and left it moist. He rose in a determined manner and adjusted his helmet.

"_Adieu_, my Camel!" He took a last survey of the machine. "The kitchen is calling to my appetite; a storm is brewing in the heavens; a pair of dark eyes is urging all the romance within me; so--mill-stream or no mill-stream--_mon oncle_, I come."

He squared his shoulders and, with the rather absurd long stride and the odd raising of the knee, made for the cottage door, from underneath which a faint glow of light was timidly emerging.

III

In response to his knock there was a roar from within, and the door opened enough to show the young lady in the doorway.

"Good evening," he said gravely. "I saw the light in here and decided to accept its kindly invitation."

She glanced over her shoulder; but the airman, gently putting her to one side, entered and looked serenely about the room, which appeared to be kitchen, dining-room, and parlor in one. Beside the stove he noticed the stooped figure of a man, whose huge black beard straggled over a suit of overalls that had once been dark blue, but had become a dirty white from constant association with flour.

"Good evening, monsieur." The airman handed his helmet to the girl and proceeded to unbutton his coat. The miller's blotched eyes rose sulkily to the visitor's face.

"What do you want here?" His voice was nasal and slovenly, and there was a hoarse growl in the words, as though his throat was parched and rusted.

"I am doing myself the honor of taking supper with you, monsieur." The airman's face was full of melancholy dignity as he divested himself of his coat.

The miller's mouth opened, and a rasping, deep snarl resonated disagreeably. "There is the village, five kilometers that way."

"Ah--but that is five kilometers too far."

"You cannot stay here"--the miller's voice rose angrily--"there is but food for two."

The Englishman tapped his pipe against his heel, and blew through it to ensure its being empty. "Then, monsieur," he said, "you must go hungry."

The Frenchman rose to his feet and brandished both arms above his head. "Go!" he bellowed, and swore an oath that comprised a reference to the sacred name of one dog and the sudden demise of the afore-mentioned ten thousand devils who, it appeared, rested heavily on his conscience.

"Mademoiselle"--the young man turned politely to the girl--"I apologize for this gentleman. Shall I throw him into the stream, or would a cleansing spoil his particular style of mottled beauty?"

The miller became eloquent. His language was threatening, blasphemous, and deafening. His whole ungainly body vibrated with a fury which, at certain moments, grew to such a pitch that he would raise his chin upwards until all that could be seen was a forest of beard, the while he emitted an unearthly roar that could have been clearly heard on the village road. The girl, who had been making preparations for supper, glanced timidly at him, but continued her work. The cat, slumbering by the stove, opened his eyes dreamily as if some sweet strain had come to his ears then settled to slumber once more.

And the whole room resounded and quivered to the hurricane of sound.

With an air of complete imperturbability, the intruding guest slowly backed towards the table and became engrossed in the task of refilling his pipe, though beneath the glow-worm eyebrows his eyes (which were very clear and blue, as though his excursions into the last free element of nature had blown all the dust and grime away) held the orator in a steady look.

"Fill your pipe?" he said cryptically, choosing a moment when his host was swelling up with a breath that promised to burst his ribs.

The response was startling.

Exhausting the air from his lungs with the noise of steam escaping from an overcharged boiler, the miller rushed blindly forward, crouching so low that his beard against his discolored clothes suggested an ugly bush against a background of slushy snow.

With the precision of a guardsman forming fours, the airman took one pace to the rear with his left foot and one to the right with his right foot. This maneuver, successfully completed, placed the table between himself and his assailant, and, tilting it dexterously, he swiftly thrust that article of furniture forward, where it came into violent contact with the irate miller's knees and shins. With an indescribable howl the worthy man fell back in a paroxysm of agony, grasping his knees with both hands, and rocking to and fro like a demented dervish.

The airman bowed gravely to the girl. "I learned that," he said, "from a gentleman by name of Charlie Chaplin. If you can oblige me with a custard pie I shall hurl it at your uncle and thus complete the Chaplinesque method of discounting violence."

The young woman's brows puckered. The spectacle of her uncle's discomfiture had not disturbed her so much as this new kind of a person who could bow so courteously, whose eyes twinkled humorously, and whose words were full of gravity on the subject of custard pies. She came of a race that coordinated gestures and the play of features with speech; but this stranger of the air--_Sapristi!_

The moaning of the uncle grew less and his figure stopped its rocking; but his red, blotchy eyes looked furtively at the young man, biding their owner's time for a renewal of hostilities.

With an air of deep dejection the airman gazed at the unlovely spectacle, then, very slowly, unfastened his holster and drew a revolver.

"Monsieur," he said, "I offer peace. The alternative is--that I fill you full of holes--which would interfere with your singing. I intend to have supper here, because I saw hens outside. If they have given no eggs, we shall eat the hens themselves as a punishment. We are allies, you and I; let us be friends as well. Monsieur"--he struck a Napoleonic attitude--"_Vive l'Entente!_"

The swarthy face of the miller, who had retained his posture on the floor throughout, wrinkled hideously into a grin, which developed into a roaring laugh that set a solitary vase jingling.

With a doubtful air of appreciation, the airman surveyed him, his head inclining dubiously to one side. "Come, monsieur," he said, after the miller's unpleasant mirth had subsided, "you sit there--at the far end of the table; mademoiselle--when you have given us the supper things--here; and I, at this end. Just to show how completely I trust you, my host, I will keep my revolver beside my plate; and should it be necessary for me to blow your brains out during the meal, it will be with the very keenest regret that I lose a friend for whom I have acquired such an instantaneous and profound affection."

Thus the young lady with the guileless eyes, the youth who had descended from the clouds, and the stentorian miller with the painful knees, sat down together for their evening repast.

And the mill-stream, chuckling as it sportively tumbled over the chute, made a pleasant serenade.

IV

The airman glanced at his wrist-watch; it was half-past nine. The miller slept by the side of the stove, his chin crushing his beard against his chest. Louis also slept, having curled himself into a black, furry ball, apparently possessed of neither head nor tail. A clock brazenly stating the time to be five-thirty, ticked lazily as though finding itself four hours behind the correct hour, there was no chance of its ever catching up, and it only kept going because it was the sporting thing to do. Just over the clock a picture of Marshal Joffre gazed paternally on the quiet scene.

Seated at the table, which was covered by a geranium-colored cloth, the girl and the airman sat silent, while a shaded lamp lent a crimson glow through which her deep eyes gleamed, like the first stars of a summer evening.

To her romance had come.

She was no longer the miller's niece, but the girl who had seen the Fairy Prince. All the sighs, all the questionings, all the longings of her girlhood had culminated in this amazing adventure of a fair-haired knight who, descending from the clouds, had proceeded to terrorize her uncle who was feared for miles around. It was wonderful. And he was so droll, this young man; and his voice had a little soothing drop in it, at times, that left a fluttering echo in her heart.

She had left the convent when ten years of age, on the death of her mother. Her father--but then gossip was never kind. He was an officer who had deserted his pretty little wife for another woman--or so rumor had it; and her mother had died, a flower stricken by a frost. The daughter had been taken by a relative, the owner of a lonely mill, and for six years had lived in solitude, her horizon of life limited to the adjacent village, her knowledge of women gained from the memory of a sad, yearning face, paler than the pillow on which it rested, and an occasional visit to the curé's sister. Of men she knew only her uncle and the few villagers that had not gone to fight for La Belle France.

From unquestioning childhood she had passed to that stage in a girl's life when the emotions leap past the brain, fretful of the latter's plodding pace. Her mind untutored, unsharpened by contact with other minds, left her the language and the reasonings of a child; but her imagination, feeding on the strange longings and dreams which permeated her life, pictured its own world where romance held sway over all the creatures that inhabited its realm.

It is the instinct of a little child to picture unreal things--the unconscious protest of immaturity against the commonplaceness of life. But with the education of to-day and the labyrinth of artificiality which characterizes modern living, the imaginativeness of childhood disappears, except in a few great minds who, retaining it, are hailed by the world as possessors of genius.

Unhampered (or unhelped, as the case may be) by association with the patchwork pattern of society, the miller's niece had retained her gift of imagination, without which the solitude and the monotony of her days would have been unendurable; until, blending it with the budding flower of womanhood, she found mystery in the moaning of the wind. While the sun danced upon the grass her spirit mingled with the sunlight; and when the moon exercised her suzerainty of the heavens the poetry in her soul thrilled to sweet dreams of lover's wooings (though her unreasoned rapture often ended in unreasoned tears upon the pillow).... She found melancholy in the coloring of an autumn leaf, and laughter in the music of the mill-stream.... There were smugglers' tales in a northeast gale, and fairy stories in a summer's shower.

The doctrine of pleasure so feverishly followed by her sisters to-day was unknown to her--as was its insidious reaction which comes to so many women, with the dulling of the perceptions, the blinding of eyes to the colors of life, the deadening of ears to the music of nature, until they cannot hear the subtle melody of happiness itself, so closely allied to the somber beauty of sorrow.

"Little one"--the aviator's voice was very soft, so that the ticking of the clock sounded clearly above it--"in a few minutes I must go. It is a dark night, and of necessity I must get to the village to-night, and be on my way before dawn."

Her eyes were hidden by her drooping eyelashes. "You will return--yes?" she asked, without looking up.

He smiled rather wistfully. "'When the red-breasted robins are nesting,'" he quoted slowly, "'I shall come.'"

The clock ticked wearily on.... A few drops of rain fell upon the roof.

"Monsieur"--the crimson in her cheeks deepened--"you must not smile; but it is in my book, here."

She took from the table _The Fairy Prince_, and handed it to him. He gazed at it with a seriousness he might have shown towards a book of Scottish theology.

"You know, monsieur"--she appeared deeply concerned in the design of the geranium table-cover--"I never leave the mill-house unless to attend mass, and sometimes--perhaps you would think so, too--it is very lonesome; no brother, no sister, just Louis and my uncle."

He nodded, and, with an air of abstraction, his brow wrinkled sympathetically, and his fingers strummed five-finger exercises on the table.

"It must be very dull," he said.

"But no, monsieur"--her eyes looked up in protest--"not dull--just lonesome."

He sustained an imaginary note with his little finger, frowned thoughtfully until his eyebrows almost obscured his eyes, then came down the scale with slow and measured pace.

"Well, little lady who is never dull, and what has all this to do with _The Fairy Prince_?"

"It is because I have no sisters, no friends, that--that I pretend. But you do not understand."

He played some chord with both hands.

"Very young people and very old ones pretend," he said, with dreamy sententiousness; "pretending is what makes them happy. But the Prince----?"

She smiled deprecatingly. "When I read, monsieur, I think that the girl--there is always a girl, is there not?" He nodded gravely. "I do not think it is she," she went on, "but myself; and when the book is finished, and she marries her lover, then I am happy ... and dream...."

"'We are such stuff as dreams are made of,'" he murmured, and trilled with his first and second fingers.

"So, monsieur," she continued, glancing shyly at him, "in that book----"

"There is a girl."

"Yes. And a Fairy Prince who was very handsome."

"Like me?"

"It does not say, monsieur."

"Ah!"

"But I think so," she said earnestly, "for he was the handsomest man in all France."

"It said nothing of England?"

"No, monsieur, only France."

He nodded with great dignity, and motioned her to proceed. She leaned forward with her elbows on the table, and rested her chin on her interlocked fingers.

"To-day I was reading it to Louis," she said, "when, just at the moment that they met--_vous voilà!_--you came. Monsieur," she said naïvely, "are you a fairy prince?"

He considered, with head characteristically on one side.

"N-no," he said, "I cannot claim that, but----"

"Ah, yes?" Her face lit up with delighted anticipation.

"I am a prince of the air." He struck an attitude and held it.

"Oh!" Her lips parted in ecstasy and her cheeks, which had been crimson, became scarlet. "You--are really a prince?"

"Of the air, mademoiselle." He folded his arms and tilted his chair back. His face was still grave, but his voice had a sense of distance in it, and his light eyes widened as though they saw the world his words were picturing. "My kingdom is greater than all the kingdoms of the earth, and when I ride, my steed with wings takes me towards the stars. For sport I play with clouds and race the wind; at night the moon gives me light; and when I travel there are no mountains to climb, no lakes to cross. I go faster than the swiftest horse, and ride from villages to cities, out into the country, and over the sea with a steed that never tires."

"But, monsieur," she cried, "this is wonderful!"

He looked frankly into her eyes. "It _is_ wonderful," he said.

For a few minutes neither spoke, and the soft symphony of raindrops played through the quietness of the night.

"Your Majesty," she said timorously, "are you very brave? You understand," she hurried on as a slight blush darkened the tan of his cheeks, "in fairy books the prince always fights a dragon or a wicked giant."

"Don't uncles count?"

She made a pretty _moue_.

"As a matter of fact," he said slowly, "there was a wicked Emperor--a blustering popinjay with a madman's vanity--who decreed that all the world should be his slaves, and sent his armies into France and Belgium to enforce his will. My brothers heard of this, and came from countries and dominions thousands of miles away. Across great continents of water they sailed, and, with their brothers from the little Islands of the North Sea, came to France...."

"Your voice is very sad," she said tenderly. Her nature, that knew every mood of a summer breeze, had caught the inflection of his words, understanding by their tone what the vagueness of his words hid from her mind.

"So many have died," he said, looking away from her. "Almost every day some one rides out into the sunlight to his death, young, brave, and smiling.... Mademoiselle, it is wonderful how they smile."

Tick--tick--tick.

For more than a minute neither spoke, then, with a smile that was strangely boyish, he squared his shoulders and ran his fingers through his rumpled hair.

"Ha!" he laughed; "what fancies get into a scatter-brain like mine when the rain's a-pattering on the roof. If you will allow me, little Pippa, I shall smoke."

"Little Peepa?" she laughed delightedly.

"Pippa," he assented, puffing smoke as he lighted the pipe. "I think I shall call you that. You see, according to her biographer, Mr. Browning, she worked in the silk-mills all the year, but one day she had to herself, from dawn to midnight, and so as to enjoy it to the full she--well, she pretended, like you."

"But that is droll," she said eagerly, "for every Easter after Sunday, my uncle, who is fatigued from so much chanting in the church, always goes to Boulogne and becomes drunk for one whole day. On Wednesday he returns. These six years he has done it always the same; and on the Tuesday it is wonderful. I am alone with Louis, and we ask all the people in our books to visit us."

A sudden gleam of excitement lit his eyes.

"The Tuesday after Easter?"

"Always it is so."

"Pippa," he said--but checked the remainder of his words. He placed the pipe in his mouth and ran five-finger exercises at a terrific speed.

"Pippa," he said again, then, ceasing his display of virtuosity, leaned back and gazed at her from beneath his eyebrows. "Next spring, on the Tuesday after Easter, I will come for you."

She caught her breath deliriously.

"Beyond the village road," he went on, speaking slowly and distinctly, "I saw a big pasture-field at the top of the hill. Be there as the sun is just above the horizon, and I will come in an aeroplane."

"And, your Majesty, you will take me to your kingdom?"

"For one day, Pippa, to the great city of London--the city that is open to all who possess a golden key. We shall return by the stars at night."

"Then"--her voice shook, and the brilliancy of her eyes was softened by sudden tears, as the rays of an August sun are sometimes tempered by a shower, "then--at last--I am to see the world--boys and girls and palaces and----"

"To say nothing of prunes and potentates."

"Oh, but, your Majesty, it is too wonderful. I am certain it will not come true."

He rose and quietly placed his chair against the wall. "Pippa," he said, "there are only two things that could prevent it. One, if there is a storm and--the other----" he shook his head impatiently.

The girl took down a work-basket, and after searching its contents extracted a tiny trinket.

"You mean," she said, stepping lightly over to him, "that you might go to join your brothers--those who smiled so bravely?"

"We never know, Pippa," he answered.

She reached for the lapel of his coat and pinned the little keepsake on it. "'Tis a black cat," she said. "I saw it in the village store, so small and funny, like Louis. It is a gift from little Pippa, who will pray to the Virgin every night that her Prince may not be killed--unless----"

He looked at the little mascot, which dangled above a couple of ribbons.

"Unless?" he said.

For a moment there was a flash in her eyes and a sudden crimson flush in her cheeks that startled him. For the first time in her life she felt the instinct of a tigress; that strange fusion of passion and timidity that comes to women of her kind when it seems they may lose the object of their love.

"Unless he--forgets." The words were spoken between lips that hardly moved.

"By the sacred bones of my ancestors," he said, with a sort of sincere grandiloquence, "I promise to come. So that I shall always think of you, my Pippa, I will paint a black cat upon the machine, and woe to the Hun who dares to singe its whiskers!"

A few minutes later, the heavily coated figure of an aviator was plowing its way through a drizzling rain, along a dark and solitary road. His pace was extraordinarily long for his height, and he appeared to be stepping over a perpetual array of obstacles at least one foot high.

By a casement window a girl, with hair like the dusk, stood gazing towards the road that was hidden in darkness. Silently and motionless she watched the melancholy drops of rain as they fell upon the glass, until, unconsciously, her lips parted and she sang, very softly, the little song taught to the maiden in the story by the lonely shepherd:

"Maman, dites moi ce qu'on sent quand on aime.
Est-ce plaisir, est-ce tourment?"

She paused in the improvised melody, and repeated the words slowly.

"Est-ce plaisir, est-ce tourment?"

And then the little mistress of the mill laid herself upon her bed and wept profusely; but whether it was because she was happy or because she was sorrowful, let those explain who understand the psychology of a woman's tears.

Downstairs, Louis and the miller slept profoundly.

V

It was several months later that an airman emerged from his hut into the chilly air of an April night that was lingering grudgingly over its last hour of darkness. There was a sullen rumble of guns borne on a restless breeze that stirred the long grass of the fields and set the leaves in the trees whispering and quivering. The drone could be heard of a lonely aeroplane returning from its night-ride over the enemy lines.... Above the distant roll of the artillery, one gun stood out like a pizzicato note on a giant bass violin.

The airman passed the silent aerodrome, and, with difficulty accustoming himself to the darkness, made out the shadow of a machine in the adjoining field. He heard the sigh of cylinders sucking in the petrol as the mechanics warmed the machine, and walked over to it. For a moment he spoke to the men before climbing into the pilot's seat. There followed the incisive monotone of the flier's incantation between himself and the non-commissioned officer.

"Petrol on: switch off."

"Petrol on: switch off."

"Contact."

"Contact."

The propellers were swung into action, hesitated for a moment, then wheezily subsided.

The incantation was repeated; the propeller blades coughed, and leaped into a deafening roar. The mechanics sprang aside, and the machine, stumbling forward for a few yards, turned into the wind. There was a sudden acceleration of the propeller, a crescendo from the engines, and the machine made swiftly across the field, rising as it attained flying speed, and disappearing into the night.

A few moments later its light was mixing with the dulling stars, and the drone of its engine could be heard only at the whim of the breeze.

"I wonder what the Black Cat's up to now," said mechanic No. 1, rubbing his hands together for warmth. "Rum beggar, isn't he?"

His companion slapped his breast with his arms and blew on his fingers. "Mad as a March hare," he growled; "takes a two-seater out at this time of night."

"And did you notice the extra outfit?"

"He's mad," repeated the before-dawn psychologist, "mad as a rabbit."

"But he's a mighty stout boy," interposed the N.C.O., who was torn between his duty of keeping discipline and his love of character study; "and he sure puts the wind up Fritz when he takes off with his Black Cat Bristol fighter."

The blackness of night was beginning to give way to a dull and sullen gray as the solitary pilot made a detour over the lines. In the gloom beneath he could see a long crescent of orange-colored flashes where the British guns were maintaining their endless pounding of the enemy. Farther east was a large patch of winking, yellow lights, giving to his eye the same effect as flakes of gunpowder dropped upon a heated stove: it was the bursting of the British shells. Beyond that field of death he could see other and larger flashes, and knew the Hun was replying in kind.

Everywhere the darkness was being penetrated by long, rocket-like lights with a white, starry burst at the end, and, as though to give variety to the scene, a few red and green bursts mingled garishly with them.

To the airman, from his refuge of height, it all combined in an uncanny pageant of fireworks--a weird spectacle of death, as though hell had opened and the passions of men were feeding the flames to make a devils' holiday.

A searchlight woke him from his reverie. A couple of anti-aircraft guns barked at him. With a smile he noticed the rapid approach of morning's light, and, turning to the west, he set his course by the compass and made for the lonely mill-house of Picardy.

VI

From a meadow at the top of a hill, a girl watched the horizon of the east as the first glow of daylight heralded the arrival of Aurora's chariot. The hurried walk from the mill-house and the climbing of the hill had set her pulses throbbing with vitality, and as she watched the dull gray give way with the promise of dawn, a wild, unthinking spirit of exaltation seized her. Like the Pippa of Browning's song, she felt her spirit rise with the triumph of nature.

Day!
Faster and more fast,
O'er night's brim, day boils at last:
Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim
Where spurting and suppressed it lay,
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid gray
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.

But he had not come--her Prince with the solemn face and the laughing eyes. Day after day, through the long winter, she had lived for this hour, thrilling over it, picturing it, dreaming of it--both awake and asleep.... And he had not come.

Suppose--supposing----

Her heart leaped painfully. She had heard a sound like the humming of an insect--faint--then more clear. The hum became a drone, and in sheer intoxication she reached her hands towards the east as the sun, well above the horizon, illumed the sky with gold-red flames. Blinded by its brilliancy, she turned away; but her ear heard the cessation of the engine as the pilot brought his machine towards the earth. She knew that he must be approaching her; yet she kept her face averted, on some caprice of sixteen years, until she heard his voice calling, a few yards off.

He bowed very low as, with lowered eyes, she gave him her hand; then, indicating a coat on his arm, he leant towards her, with some effort making his voice heard above the impatient throbbing of the aeroplane's engine.

"Take off your hat," he cried, noticing with quick approval the pretty costume she wore (for however poor she may be, no French girl is without one becoming frock), "and slip your curls into this helmet. It's the largest I could find."

She did as she was bidden, laughing delightedly.

"Now, youngster, climb into this."

He wrapped her in a fur-lined leather coat, and after buttoning it securely, lingered for a moment over the amusing and dainty picture she presented. Then, picking her up in his arms, he carried her over to the machine and deposited her in the observer's seat, fastening the belt. He was just about to climb into his place in front, when, changing his mind, he leaned over to her and placed both hands on her shoulders.

"Frightened?" he smiled, speaking so close to her ear that a truant curl brushed against his cheek.

She shook her head decisively--for a considerable period she had been beyond the power of speech.

He looked into her eyes, which seemed to have borrowed something of the sunlight, and patted her reassuringly on the shoulder.... And Mademoiselle Pippa, niece of the absent miller, would have gone straight to the moon with him had it been his wish and in his power.

She watched him wonderingly as he lifted a heavy sand-bag used as ballast, and dropped it on the ground. The next moment he was in the pilot's seat, there was a crescendo of the engine, a waddling sensation as the aeroplane went forward, the sudden development of the crescendo, the burst of speed, and....

The earth was receding!

She caught her breath, and hid her face in her hands to stifle a cry and keep the sight from her eyes. She had been afraid that she would faint with dizziness, and for a full minute sat, terror-stricken, until, gaining courage, she tremblingly parted two fingers and cast a timorous glance below. A cry escaped from her--but it was not one of fear.

Beneath her, though she was not conscious of height, the countryside spread, a great masterpiece of color, the light brown of plowed fields standing out vividly against the green of meadows where sheep (she laughed out at the thought) were huddled in little groups like peanuts; roads had become paths, and cottages were dwarfed to miniature dwellings for the tiniest dolls.

But--she felt no height.

Only, the landscape, refreshed after its long winter repose, kept closing in--closing in, displaying new beauties every minute, as though she were in real truth a Fairy Princess summoning villages and rivers and farms into one vast tapestry of nature.

And this was France! As far as the eye could see, it was France, the mother of greatness. For the first time she pictured the wide, charred plains where the Hun had been, and scalding tears hid everything from her sight.

Several times her cavalier of the clouds had turned around to see that she was not frightened, and, as often as he did so, she nodded excitedly, and waved both hands after the manner of an orchestral conductor calling for a fortissimo. Once he shut off the engines, and they seemed to lie in the wind, a becalmed ship of the air.

"All right?" he queried inelegantly.

She tried to think of some word to summarize her emotions, but, failing utterly, raised her goggles and thanked him with her eyes. A woman's methods are not affected by altitude.

It seemed to her that they had flown for an hour, when, in her tapestry of landscape, she found the gradual inclusion of the steeples and the roof-tops of a city, the streets of which gave the impression of having been drawn with a brown crayon with the aid of a ruler. The aeroplane appeared to be turning with the wind, and she grasped the side of the fuselage, when the whole scene was obliterated by a sea of billowy foam that left her cheek wet. She laughed with delight, and reached out with her hands, as though she would grasp the foam and compress it like snow in her fingers. She sang and clapped her hands in sheer joyousness. She was alone with her Prince in a world of dreams. The billows of foam grew less dense, became a mist through which light gleamed, and they emerged once more. Beneath them lay the Channel, shimmering in the April sun. The magic wand drew the Strait to her gaze as it had done the fields of France... Suddenly there was no throbbing of the engine, and they seemed to float, motionless, in space.

He turned around and pointed to a border of white that lay against the blue of the water.

"_Enfin!_" he cried. "England!"

VII

There was a knock at the door of "The Plough and Crown," which, in spite of its similarity to the title of a treatise, is the name of an exceedingly cosy little inn less than twenty miles from the outskirts of London. The landlady answered in person, presenting just the stout, apple-cheeked, buxom appearance that any one would expect from the owner of so cheery a hostelry.

"Good-morning to you, sir--and to you, miss," said the estimable woman, as the unlocked door revealed an airman of solemn mien and a blushing young lady whose hair had been blown into utter and captivating disorder.

A very small dog appeared, irritably, from some subterranean passage, and taking in the sight of strangers, proceeded to bark with such energy that, with each effort, he was shunted several inches to the rear, like a gun recoiling after discharge, until from very ill-temper he barked himself completely off the scene and out of this history.

"Good-morning, madam," said the aviator. "This young lady and myself would like to have breakfast at your house."

The girl glanced furtively at him. It was the first time she had heard him speak in English.

"Bless your baby faces!" cried the good woman. "Come in out of the chilly morning; though what you be doing at this hour is beyond the likes o' me to fathomate" (a word which performed its function by being thoroughly understood).

She led them into the coffee-room, where he removed his coat and helmet, and threw them, together with the girl's flying-costume, over a chair. A sleepy-eyed and slovenly young woman-of-all-work appeared on the scene, and proceeded to build a wood fire in the grate; while the landlady, after the manner of her kind, bustled about, shifting chairs, colliding with the fire-making girl, removing glasses from the bar to the table, from the table to the shelf, and back again to the bar again, all the while talking incessantly, or making comfortable noises when words failed her (which was very seldom), and in short, giving that feeling of hospitable activity handed down from the good old days when passengers used to arrive by coach at "The Plough and Crown."

"Madam," said the flying-man, seizing a moment when a more than usually severe jolt against her assistant had deprived the good woman of breath, "I must telephone the aerodrome at Hounslow to send for my machine, so I shall stroll to the post-office down the road. In the meantime--this young lady speaks no English----"

"Bless her heart! What heathen country----"

"----speaks no English," he persisted, "and has traveled a long distance in the air----"

"Well, I've often said that----"

"----in the air," he repeated, stifling her philosophy in its birth, "and I shall be grateful if you will give her any attentions that your kind heart may suggest. She is cold, and I suppose she wants to make herself look pretty."

"Leave her to me, the sweet innocent. If she were my own daughter, me not having any, but----"

"When I return, may we have breakfast?"

"A simple breakfast 'twill have to be," said the hostess, emitting the words with a forcefulness reminiscent of a geyser that has been supporting on its chest a mountain which has obligingly shifted its position. "Things is awful bad, and the Government don't trust no one these days. But I'll see what I can get for you two children, for you're an officer gentleman, and my own good man's in the army--London Scottish he is, though he ain't any more Scottish than the Pope of Rome; but he always had a fine figure, had my man--Jacob Wilson is his name, for thirty year owner of "The Plough and Crown," which always is welcome to them as wants a pint o' bitter or a bed for the night, and always will be as long as Jacob Wilson or me is to be found in the taproom when opening-time arrives."

After this announcement of the past and future policy of "The Plough and Crown," the worthy woman seized a chair that was innocently gazing out of the window, and placed it directly opposite a highly colored picture of a young lady in pink, talking to a blue young gentleman, while a yellow horse, in proportion a little larger than the horse of Troy, looked soulfully at them over a hedge.

Having done this, she rested her hands on her hips and sighed like a woman who knows she is overworked, but is resigned to her fate.

"Excuse me," said the airman politely, then turned to his companion, who had been staring in wide-eyed bewilderment at the activities of Mrs. Jacob Wilson.... Frowning heavily at his young passenger, he inserted his pipe into his mouth, and left the inn without another word, sauntering along the roadway, where hedges and meadow-larks and cosy thatched cottages were combining in the merriest of madrigals on the beauty of Old England.

Upstairs, in "The Plough and Crown," Pippa's toilet was being superintended by the estimable proprietress, whose hospitality, surmounting the difficulty of language, poured out in a stream of garrulity.

She described to her little guest how Mr. Jacob Wilson first appeared in kilts, causing her (Mrs. Jacob Wilson) to throw her apron over her face and bid her lord and master go upstairs and clothe himself in propriety. She further confessed that he was a poor correspondent (though a man of deep intellect, for he was given to long spasms of silence); but every time he wrote from the trenches, which was once a month (though one month he had written twice, but in September--or was it October?--he had not written at all)--at any rate, he always said that he had a cold in his head and would she send his medicine, which he had used for eight-and-twenty years, and which had never failed to cure him.

After this testimony to Mr. Jacob Wilson's recuperative powers, despite his susceptibility to colds, his wife became confidential, and told the girl of the adoration showered on her during her honeymoon by the aforesaid absent gentleman, together with other and romantic details which, being told in the strictest confidence, naturally have no place in these pages.

And the little girl from the Picardy mill-house listened. She may have understood that somewhere in the landlady's bountiful breast a noble heart was beating, that behind her cheerfulness lay the shadow of the trenches, and that any moment "The Plough and Crown" might be robbed of the good man who had marched away with the London Scottish.

She may have understood less than that--or more. Who knows?

Half-an-hour later the Airy Prince returned, and they sat down together to a breakfast served to the tune of chortling fowls and the neighing of a nearby horse, while the fire chuckled and crackled in enjoyment of some joke of its own.

"Well, Pippa," said the Black Cat, seizing a moment when Mrs. Jacob Wilson had absented herself from the room, "and what do you think of the English?"

The girl of the mill-house pictured the only two she had met.

"I think," she said timidly, "that you are--how say you it--great talkers, yes?"

"Bless my soul!" said he, cutting a loaf of bread with the melancholy of an executioner beheading an esteemed relative; "aren't we?"

VIII

The train for London came round the bend, and drew up, panting, beside the platform. The airman and his little companion glanced into four compartments which were completely filled, and, hearing the admonition of the guard, were forced to enter a first-class carriage containing five occupants, who glared at the intruders with that triumph of rudeness found only on an English railroad.

"Sorry," murmured the airman, and added something unintelligible about the train being full. A fierce-looking gentleman looked up from the _Morning Post_ and lowered the window to its fullest extent. An anemic woman opposite sneezed and fixed a devastating stare on the fierce gentleman. A very young officer of the Guards felt his lip, and stroked that portion of it which was pregnant with promise of mustache, while his mind wandered into the future. Would he cut Lady Dazzrymple's beastly dance, and content himself with only three that evening? Or, dash it all! should he go the whole works? What a bore!... A young woman with a face of deep intensity read the _New Statesman_, every now and then looking up from its pages (as a horse drinking at a trough will raise its head between draughts), apparently defying any one to challenge her on anything.

With his hands lazily in his coat-pockets, an Australian captain leant back in his corner and took in the freshness and winsomeness of the French girl, with an admiring frankness that inspired sudden doubt in the airman's mind whether it was really desirable to maintain a huge Empire.

For ten minutes, in a funereal silence, the train hurried towards the Metropolis, while the temperature of the compartment, both actually and temperamentally, dropped to freezing-point. Once, as an unusually pretty meadow met her eye (and where are there such meadows as one sees in England?), Pippa emitted an exclamation of delight and clapped her hands.

A look of horror from the fierce gentleman caromed off the _Morning Post_ to the face of the offender. The anemic woman stopped blowing her nose, and concentrated all her energies on a disdainful sniff. The very young Guardsman brought his eyes out of the future, and stared right through the girl--rotten form, what! The intense young woman frowned and made a mental note that she would write an article on "The Girl of To-day"--or, perhaps, a letter to the _New Statesman_ would be more effective. One never knew, these degenerate times, if an author was writing from conviction or merely writing for a living.

The Australian smiled generously, and burrowed his hands deeper into his capacious pockets.

Very timidly the erring daughter of France shifted closer to her protector, and her hand reached appealingly for his, which caused all eyes but the Australian's to disappear like the legs of a troupe of Japanese acrobats from a cross-bar.

"Your Majesty----" she said.

"Hush, Pippa. You must call me just 'monsieur.'"

"But why?"

"Well--you see, a prince is very important, and----"

"Then that is why these people are so solemn? They know you are a prince, yes?"

The airman tapped the bridge of his nose meditatively. "N-not exactly," he said.

"But they are so sad."

"They are," he agreed; "but my countrymen sink to their greatest melancholy when they travel."

"But why, monsieur?"

"That," he said, "I cannot tell you. Perhaps traveling on a train reminds them of the brief journey of life itself. At any rate, all really well-bred people who travel resent others doing the same thing."

"What are well-bred people?"

He gazed at an advertisement for pyjamas.

"Well-bred people," he said sententiously, "are those who base their superiority on such intangible things that they leave nothing on which one can contest it. Do you understand me?"

"No," said Pippa frankly; "but I like your voice."

"Thank you, little one. It was one of the first things I learned at Harrow--to say something well rather than something worth hearing."

"I wonder if Louis had his breakfast," said she, at a tangent.

"I think so," he said, with a man's vagueness towards domestic economy; "but, to finish my definition of well-bred people----"

"Louis will be angry at my leaving him," she said musingly.

"Pippa, you must listen to me," he said gravely.

"But may I not talk as well?"

"Really charming women only listen."

"_Tiens!_ What a droll country! Do these people understand what we say?"

"I don't think so, youngster. Most Britishers look on foreign languages as immoral."

The fierce gentleman, who had been growing bluer with cold every minute, suddenly endeavored to suppress a sneeze by smothering his face in a large handkerchief, with the result that he produced a combustive cohesion of sounds, which caused a gurgle of delight from the miller's niece. Violently blowing his nose, the irate one resumed his newspaper, first turning his coat-collar about his ears as the bracing April air blew full against him, and looking as genuinely bad-tempered as his somewhat immobile features would permit.

"But he is amusing, is he not?" cried the little French girl, then shrank back as the New Statesmanist fixed her with a look of ineffable and disapproving intellectuality. "Monsieur, why is it she looks at me so?"

The aviator transferred his scrutiny from pyjamas to a picture of Canterbury Cathedral.

"She is the New Woman," he said; "and all New Women resent the Old."

"I am old?--but no!"

He lowered his eyes from the cathedral to her happy, flushed face.

"Pippa," he said, "you are as old as Cleopatra."

"Cleo-patra. How many years has she?"

"Oh, about two thousand."

She pretended to be offended, and ended by looking such a thoroughly engaging little figure, with her dark hair and innocently intriguing eyes, that the airman resumed his study of architecture from sheer self-defense, and the Australian contemplated the odds against his knocking the student of cathedrals on the head, and, _à la_ caveman of old, eloping forcibly with the damsel.

Chimney-pots! Hundreds of them--thousands of them.

Chimney-pots! Standing like regiments in stiff and orderly array, waiting for a review that never took place.

Chimney-pots! Short ones, stout ones, crumbling ones; gray, blue, and indigo ones; pots of no color at all, and just as little character.

Chimney-pots! Racing by, mile after mile; industrious fellows, some of them, puffing out black smoke as though the mist over London were their private and personal concern.

Chimney-pots!

"Waterloo!" yelled a dozen voices, and the bewildered Pippa heard a stamping of feet, a rattling of trucks, the din of two porters in a semi-religious discussion concerning the right of way, the din being aided and abetted by a young gentleman possessed of a voice which had recently broken, who howled, alternately in a deep bass and a shrill treble (giving the general effect of a Swiss yodeler running amok), that, in exchange for coin of the realm, he was willing to barter light refreshment--very light refreshment indeed--in the shape of small biscuits or popular magazines. A slim girl porter, far too weak for her task, dragged a trunk from the van for a vigorous indispensable, who stood by with sixpence in his hand. A sailor kissed a rosy-cheeked woman with moist heartiness.... A taxi-driver, outside the station, took a sudden and violent dislike to a horse-cabby, casting loud aspersions on the latter's respectability, and hinting at a doubtful pedigree; to which the other replied simultaneously, his remarks being quite unintelligible, but apparently giving himself the greatest personal satisfaction. Down the road a street-piano burst forth into "The Lost Chord."

"Pippa," said the airman, opening the door, "we have arrived. The Prince with the Golden Key welcomes you to London."

"_Mon Dieu_," said that young person, "what a noise!"

IX

It was nearing the middle of the afternoon when the airman succeeded, after some difficulty, in piloting his little companion across Piccadilly Circus to Regent Street. It is something to be noticed in that most cosmopolitan of districts, but more than one turned to watch the solemn officer of the formidable stride and the French girl whose wealth of hair and length of dress (barely revealing her ankles) made her seem a vignette from some past century novel.

It had been, for her, a day of wonders.

From her lonely little world, peopled with make-believe inhabitants, she had been transported through the air to the center of reality. London, the "Bagdad of the West," huge, monotonous, garish, beautiful--what term is there in language that could not be applied to that great gathering of human souls?--London sprawled before her gaze in a yellow sunlight which played such tricks with its tired buildings that age-old stone looked bright and cheerful, and the very dust seemed like the coating of frost when a thaw succeeds a freezing night.

Before her eyes the pageant of passions passed in endless array. Poverty and hypocrisy rubbed shoulders with ostentation, greed, and lust. Streets, crowded with a suffocating similarity of stodgy dwelling-places, gave way to parks, fragrant with the atmosphere of romance. Vice stalked unashamed through the thronged streets, and dull, tired faces, leaving monotony in their trail, passed their next of kin without a glance, those to whom discouragement had come as some incurable disease. Sinister, sensuous eyes looked into hers, and children pure in mind as snowflakes laughed as they walked beside their nurses.

For the sun was in the heavens--and the same warmth that brings the beauty of a narcissus into being gives life to the noisome, crawling things that feed on decay.