XXVII.–SIR ROLAND TELLS A STORY
XXVIII.–THE GOD FROM THE MACHINE
XXIX.–A SECRET MISSION
XXX.–THE REAPING
XXXI.–VON HERRNUNG BAITS THE HOOK
XXXII.–ADVENTURE IN THE AIR
XXXIII.–BAWNE LEARNS THE TRUTH
XXXIV.–THE BROWN SATCHEL
XXXV.–NUMBER EIGHTEEN
XXXVI.–HUE AND CRY
XXXVII.–PATRINE CONFESSES
XXXVIII.–THE REBOUND
XXXIX.–A NIGHT IN JULY
XL.–MACROMBIE IS SACKED
XLI.–SAXHAM LIES
XLII.–SAXHAM BREAKS THE NEWS
XLIII.–THE PLUNDERED NEST
XLIV.–PATRINE REMEMBERS
XLV.–FLOTSAM FROM THE NORTH SEA
XLVI.–AT NORDEICH WIRELESS
XLVII.–THE MAN OF “THE DAY”
XLVIII.–PATRINE IS ENGAGED
XLIX.–THE WAR CLOUD BREAKS
L.–THE EVE OF ARMAGEDDON
LI.–THE INWARD VOICE
LII.–KHAKI
LIII.–FRANKY GOES TO THE FRONT
LIV.–OFFICIAL RETICENCE
LV.–NEWS OF BAWNE
LVI.–LA BRABANCONNE
LVII.–THE BELGIAN WIFE
LVIII.–SHERBRAND BUYS THE LICENCE
LIX.–THE WOE-WAVE BREAKS
LX.–KULTUR!
LXI.–LYNETTE DREAMS
LXII.–WOUNDED FROM THE FRONT
LXIII.–BAWNE FINDS A FRIEND
LXIV.–AT SEASHEERE
LXV.–GOOD-BYE, DEAR LOVE, GOOD-BYE!
LXVI.–MORE KULTUR
LXVII.–THE QUESTION
LXVIII.–THE DEVIL-EGG
LXIX.–A MENACE; AND GOOD NEWS
LXX.–A LOVER’S JOURNEY
LXXI.–LIVING AND DEAD
LXXII.–LOVE THAT HAS WINGS

*That Which Hath Wings*

*CHAPTER I*

*PRESENTS TWO YOUNG PEOPLE*

In January, 1914, Francis Athelstan Sherbrand, Viscount Norwater, only
son of that fine old warrior, General the Right Honourable Roger
Sherbrand, V.C., K.C.B., first Earl of Mitchelborough, married Margot
Mountjohn, otherwise known as “Kittums,” and found that she was
wonderfully innocent–for a girl who knew so much.

It was a genuine love-match, Franky being a comparatively poor
Guardsman, with only two thousand a year in addition to his pay as a
Second Lieutenant in the Royal Bearskins Plain, and Margot a mere
Cinderella in comparison with heiresses of the American canned-provision
and cereal kind.

It had seemed to Franky, standing with patent-leathered feet at the
Rubicon dividing bachelorhood from Benedictism, that all his wooing had
been done at Margot’s Club. True, he had actually proposed to Margot at
the Royal Naval and Military Tournament of the previous June, and
Margot, hysterical with sheer ecstasy, as the horses gravely played at
push-ball, had pinched his arm and gasped out:

“_Yes_, but don’t take my mind off the game just now; these dear beasts
are so _heavenly_! …”

And theatres, film-picture-shows and variety halls, race-meetings,
receptions, balls and kettledrums, polo and croquet-clubs, had fostered
the courtship of Franky and Margot; but all their love-making had been
carried out to the accompanying hum of conversation and the tinkle of
crystal and silver-plate in the dining-room of the “Ladies’ Social,”
where Margot had her favourite table in the glass-screened corner by the
fire-place; or in the circular smoking-room with the Persian divan and
green-glass dome, that Margot had given the Club on her nineteenth
birthday; or in the boudoir belonging to the suite she had decorated for
herself on the condition that no other member got the rooms if Margot
wanted them, which Margot nearly always did….

There was a big, rambling, ancient red-brick Hall, stone-faced in the
Early Jacobean manner, standing with its rare old gardens and
glass-houses, lawns and shrubberies, about it, within sight and sound of
the Channel, amidst pine and beech-woods carpeted with bilberry-bushes,
heathery moors, and coverts neck-high in July with the _Osmunda regalis_
fern. The Hall belonged to Margot, though you never found her there
except for a week or two in September and three days at Christmas-tide.
The first fortnight with the birds was well enough, but those three days
at Christmas marked the limit. Of human endurance Margot meant,
possibly. She never vouchsafed to explain.

She also possessed a house in town, but just as her deceased father’s
spinster sister lived at the Hall in Devonshire, so did her dead
mother’s brother Derek, with his collection of European moths and
butterflies and other _Lepidoptera_, inhabit the fine old mansion in
Hanover Square. Devonshire at Christmas marked the limit of dulness, but
Hanover Square all the London season through beat the band for sheer
ghastly boredom…. Not that there were any flies on little old
London…. Paris and Ostend were ripping places, and you could put in a
clinking good time at Monte Carlo…. Margot had tried New York and
liked it, except for the place itself, which made you think of
illustrations to weird Dunsany legends in which towering temples climb
up unendingly upon each other into black star-speckled skies. But the
Club and London, with Unlimited Bridge and Tango, constituted Margot’s
idea of earthly happiness. She never had dreamed of marrying
anybody–until Franky had arrived on the scene.

Perhaps you can see Franky, with the wholesome tan of the Autumn
Manoeuvres yet upon him. Twenty-seven, well-made and muscular, if with
somewhat sloping shoulders and legs of the type that look better in
Bedford cords and puttees, or leathers and hunting-tops, than in tweed
knickers and woollen stockings, or Court knee-breeches and silks.
Observe his well-shaped feet and slight strong hands with pointed
fingers, like those of his ancestors, painted by Vandyke; his brown
eyes–distinctly good if not glowing with the fire of intellect, his
forehead too steep and narrow; his moustache of the regulation
tooth-brush kind, adorning the upper-lip that will not shut down firmly
over his white, rather prominent, front teeth. Cap the small rounded
skull of him with bright brown hair, brushed and anointed to astonishing
sleekness, dress him in the full uniform of a Second Lieutenant in the
Bearskins Plain, and you have Franky on his wedding-day.