The car moved on where the roadway was not broken by trenches, crawling painfully over litter and wreck. In the shadow of the ruined prison, while yet the sun was high, they halted. Their chauffeur nodded to his Belgian compatriot, the Red Cross orderly, interrogated by Monseigneur, pointed to the tall brown figure standing on the grass beside the twisted wreckage of a British aëroplane.
"I will wait here for you, Mademoiselle," said Monseigneur, getting out and assisting his fellow-traveller. She was very tall and of supple figure, and wore a long blue coat with the Red Cross shield-badge, and a felt hat banded with the V.A.D. ribbon, pulled down over luxuriant masses of hair—hair that had been cloudy-black as storm-wrack and had been bleached to the hue of wintry beech-leaves, and now had darkened to the brown of peat-earth, deepening in colour every day.
She gave Monseigneur her hand, thanking him, and suddenly he thought her beautiful, although the tall young woman had not previously appealed to the sense of beauty in Monseigneur. Her long eyes under their widely arching brows were stars, her mouth was smiling. When she moved away over the snow-patched grass, she seemed to tread on air....
Throughout the drive Patrine had been torn with horrible misgivings. "What shall I say or do," she had wondered. "How shall I bear it if the look upon his face should tell me, when Alan first hears my voice—that I was wrong to come?" But the chilly fit had passed with the first glimpse of Sherbrand. The rich, warm flood rising in her veins had swept her doubts away.
Here on this shell-pitted expanse of turf you felt the War-pulse beating. French 75's were putting over a furious barrage from the south. North of the City of the Salient the British guns were slogging, and through the chain-fire of the enemy's 77 mm.'s, his 11.2-in. howitzers bellowed at short intervals, and sent in 600-pound shells.
The smoke of a train rose north-west in the direction of Thourout Junction. That the train was a German train, carrying troops and guns and munitions for War purposes, did not at once occur to Patrine. All was well. Not a doubt remained. She was near her Flying Man again after months of separation. Here at last was food for her hungry eyes and drink for her thirsting soul.
"He has grown thin, poor dear!" she thought, seeing how the war-stained khaki hung in folds on his tall figure. The broad shoulders stooped. The chest had sunken, and he leaned upon a heavy walking-stick. The beloved face was turned away, the line of the cheek was careworn. She choked upon a sob and stopped short, fighting her emotion down.
The song of the soaring lark broke off. The bird dived to earth and hid itself amongst the frosty grasses as the snoring whirr of aircraft came out of the distance high in the sky to the west. Now the shape of a big biplane gleamed pinky-white as a seagull, beating up against the thrust of the snow-tanged easterly breeze.
Nearer and nearer flew the 'plane. Now one could see it distinctly. A French machine by its blue-white-red rings, and a Caudron by its great square tail. A silver-grey monoplane scurried in its wake, a Weiss by the backward curve of its wing-tips. The whirr of its tractor and the blatter of its machine-gun wakened the echoes sleeping among the leprous white ruins of the city. The Caudron wheeled and circled beautifully, and the trac-trac of its mitraille answered the machine-gun, and spent bullets began to patter on the Plaine far below.
Suddenly the Frenchman banked and began to climb. The Weiss, its aluminium sheathing glittering in the sunshine, climbed too, so rapidly that the enemy's purpose was foiled. Then, at a great height they circled round each other, and the crack and flare of explosive revolver-bullets began to mingle with the blatter and trac-trac, and little blobs of something that blazed and sputtered wickedly began to drop with the bullets that tumbled out of the skies. It was the prettiest sight. It suggested the amorous dallying of two big butterflies, the squabble of a pair of hawking swallows, and yet the issues were Life and Death. Suddenly the Weiss took to flight. A second Caudron had showed upon the distance and the Kaiser's flier was not taking any more on. Waiting for his countryman to come abreast, the Frenchman hovered like a kite-hawk. And at the familiar buzz of the horizontal screws a visible thrill went through Sherbrand. He took off the smoked glasses that he wore, and turned his blind eyes upwards towards the sound, and on his haggard face was stamped the anguish of his despair.