its possibilities making a separate mind-picture which superseded all
those that had gone before. But as the light grew stronger and she
made out the color of the wide yellow planes, she started up with a
cry which would have been heard by the men below her had it not been
for the racket that the engine was making. “A huge machine with yellow
wings,” she remembered Jack Sandys’ description, “a thousand horsepower
at least.” The Yellow Dove--this was the Yellow Dove and the man of
mystery, its driver, was--Cyril.
Spellbound and trembling with excitement, she watched Cyril climb up
into one of the seats. Cyril was going to fly to the Germans, she knew
it now, to obey the commands which had been brought last night by the
German officer, commands to come to Germany and explain his failure
to deliver his secret message to Rizzio. They suspected him and
yet he was going to face them. It was desperate, foolhardy, insane.
He would never come back. Not victory, but death--that was what it
meant. She ran out to the very edge of the rocks, shrieking his name,
but the sounds were lost in the fearful din of the motor below. The
explosions echoed and reëchoed in the gorge which seemed to quiver
with the volume of sound. Not a head from below was turned up to look
at her and she had a sense of her own unimportance in the immensity of
Cyril’s viewpoint. She saw the yellow machine start slowly down the
incline, gathering momentum as it ran until it left the runway and rose
magnificently, its engine roaring steadily, clearing the surf and rocks
and heading straight into the growing day.
O God! That she should have suspected him of anything base and
dishonorable--a man who could face death as he was doing, as he had
been doing for months. Cyril--the Yellow Dove. There could be no doubt
of it, for she had seen with her own eyes. She understood now many
things that had been a mystery before; why he could not speak to her;
the reasons for his occasional absences, for his air of indifference,
for his coolness in the face of adverse criticism. She understood
about John Rizzio and the reasons why Cyril had wanted her to take
such precautions in getting safely back to Ashwater Park, precautions
which she had disregarded. But what mattered about her when Cyril every
day, every hour for months had taken chances against death, the most
ignominious death of all!
Her heart was big with pride in him and she followed the Yellow Dove
with her gaze, now rising high and diminishing rapidly in the mist, her
soul in her moist eyes and on her lips which were whispering words
that she hoped could follow him into the distance. Her Cyril, still
hers, and England’s--the Honorable Cyril whom the world had come to
know as the Yellow Dove.
[Illustration: “Her lips ... were whispering words that she hoped could
follow him into the distance.”]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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