Ever and again there was news of these, drawing nearer, from this Spanish town and then that, and presently from France. But of the new guns that Ostrog had made and which were known to be in the city came no news in spite of Graham's urgency, nor any report of successes from the dense felt of fighting strands about the flying stages. Section after section of the Labour-Societies reported itself assembled, reported itself marching, and vanished from knowledge into the labyrinth of that warfare. What was happening there? Even the busy ward leaders did not know. In spite of the opening and closing of doors, the hasty messengers, the ringing of bells and the perpetual clitter-clack of recording implements, Graham felt isolated, strangely inactive, inoperative.
His isolation seemed at times the strangest, the most unexpected of all the things that had happened since his awakening. It had something of the quality of that inactivity that comes in dreams. A tumult, the stupendous realisation of a world struggle between Ostrog and himself, and then this confined quiet little room with its mouthpieces and bells and broken mirror!
Now the door would be closed and Graham and Helen were alone together; they seemed sharply marked off then from all the unprecedented world storm that rushed together without, vividly aware of one another, only concerned with one another. Then the door would open again, messengers would enter, or a sharp bell would stab their quiet privacy, and it was like a window in a well built brightly lit house flung open suddenly to a hurricane. The dark hurry and tumult, the stress and vehemence of the battle rushed in and overwhelmed them. They were no longer persons but mere spectators, mere impressions of a tremendous convulsion. They became unreal even to themselves, miniatures of personality, indescribably small, and the two antagonistic realities, the only realities in being were first the city, that throbbed and roared yonder in a belated frenzy of defence and secondly the aeroplanes hurling inexorably towards them over the round shoulder of the world.
There came a sudden stir outside, a running to and fro, and cries. The girl stood up, speechless, incredulous.
Metallic voices were shouting "Victory!" Yes it was "Victory!"
Bursting through the curtains appeared the man in yellow, startled and dishevelled with excitement, "Victory," he cried, "victory! The people are winning. Ostrog's people have collapsed."
She rose. "Victory?"
"What do you mean?" asked Graham. "Tell me! What?"
"We have driven them out of the under galleries at Norwood, Streatham is afire and burning wildly, and Roehampton is ours. Ours!—and we have taken the monoplane that lay thereon."
A shrill bell rang. An agitated grey-headed man appeared from the room of the Ward Leaders. "It is all over," he cried.
"What matters it now that we have Roehampton? The aeroplanes have been sighted at Boulogne!"
"The Channel!" said the man in yellow. He calculated swiftly. "Half an hour."
"They still have three of the flying stages," said the old man.
"Those guns?" cried Graham.
"We cannot mount them—in half an hour."
"Do you mean they are found?"
"Too late," said the old man.
"If we could stop them another hour!" cried the man in yellow.
"Nothing can stop them now," said the old man. "They have near a hundred aeroplanes in the first fleet."
"Another hour?" asked Graham.
"To be so near!" said the Ward Leader. "Now that we have found those guns. To be so near—. If once we could get them out upon the roof spaces."
"How long would that take?" asked Graham suddenly.
"An hour—certainly."
"Too late," cried the Ward Leader, "too late."
"Is it too late?" said Graham. "Even now—. An hour!"
He had suddenly perceived a possibility. He tried to speak calmly, but his face was white. "There is are chance. You said there was a monoplane—?"
"On the Roehampton stage, Sire."
"Smashed?"
"No. It is lying crossways to the carrier. It might be got upon the guides—easily. But there is no aeronaut—."
Graham glanced at the two men and then at Helen. He spoke after a long pause. "We have no aeronauts?"
"None."
He turned suddenly to Helen. His decision was made. "I must do it."
"Do what?"
"Go to this flying stage—to this machine."
"What do you mean?"
"I am an aeronaut. After all—. Those days for which you reproached me were not altogether wasted."
He turned to the old man in yellow. "Tell them to put it upon the guides."
The man in yellow hesitated.
"What do you mean to do?" cried Helen.
"This monoplane—it is a chance—."
"You don't mean—?"
"To fight—yes. To fight in the air. I have thought before—. A big aeroplane is a clumsy thing. A resolute man—!"
"But—never since flying began—" cried the man in yellow.
"There has been no need. But now the time has come. Tell them now—send them my message—to put it upon the guides. I see now something to do. I see now why I am here!"
The old man dumbly interrogated the man in yellow nodded, and hurried out.
Helen made a step towards Graham. Her face was white. "But, Sire!—How can one fight? You will be killed."
"Perhaps. Yet, not to do it—or to let some one else attempt it—."
"You will be killed," she repeated.
"I've said my word. Do you not see? It may save—London!"
He stopped, he could speak no more, he swept the alternative aside by a gesture, and they stood looking at one another.
They were both clear that he must go. There was no step back from these towering heroisms.
Her eyes brimmed with tears. She came towards him with a curious movement of her hands, as though she felt her way and could not see; she seized his hand and kissed it.
"To wake," she cried, "for this!"
He held her clumsily for a moment, and kissed the hair of her bowed head, and then thrust her away, and turned towards the man in yellow.
He could not speak. The gesture of his arm said "Onward."
CHAPTER XXV
THE COMING OF THE AEROPLANES
Two men in pale blue were lying in the irregular line that stretched along the edge of the captured Roehampton stage from end to end, grasping their carbines and peering into the shadows of the stage called Wimbledon Park. Now and then they spoke to one another. They spoke the mutilated English of their class and period. The fire of the Ostrogites had dwindled and ceased, and few of the enemy had been seen for some time. But the echoes of the fight that was going on now far below in the lower galleries of that stage, came every now and then between the staccato of shots from the popular side. One of these men was describing to the other how he had seen a man down below there dodge behind a girder, and had aimed at a guess and hit him cleanly as he dodged too far. "He's down there still," said the marksman. "See that little patch. Yes. Between those bars."
A few yards behind them lay a dead stranger, face upward to the sky, with the blue canvas of his jacket smouldering in a circle about the neat bullet hole on his chest. Close beside him a wounded man, with a leg swathed about, sat with an expressionless face and watched the progress of that burning. Behind them, athwart the carrier lay the captured monoplane.