ALL IN THE AIR
Hark! I am called; my little spirit, see,
Sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me.
_Macbeth._
Sydney Wandesforde, Denis's partner, was a big, heavy-featured, heavily
built man, whose appearance nobody could have called aristocratic.
Plutocratic was more like it. There had been patent pills on the
distaff side of his ancestry, and unfortunately he had taken after
them, instead of after the belted earls of the paternal line. He had,
however, the easy manners, the clean movements, the soft voice of his
class, and if he was plain he looked able.
He had never got beyond surnames with Denis; which meant that he had
never met the soft side of that pugnacious Irish tongue. Denis was
Haus-engel, Strassteufel, a lamb to his friends, a lion abroad. There
were moments when Wandesforde thought him the most irritating man on
the face of the globe; but he bore with it, never coming to a quarrel,
because he liked and valued his partner too much to let him go. At the
time of their first meeting, Denis had spent every penny he possessed,
and had nothing to put into the partnership except his brains, and an
aeroplane which at that date (1907) couldn't be induced to quit the
ground. Yet the agreement was drawn as between equals, and Wandesforde
claimed not more but less control than in an ordinary partnership.
Why? Because he was shrewd enough to see that Denis would never work
as a subordinate; and because, as aforesaid, he valued his partner too
much to give him any excuse for throwing up his work and going off in
a huff of outraged independence, as he would have done on the least
provocation--so sensitive is an Ulsterman's pride! "Give him his head?
Of course I do!" he said with half a laugh to his brother, who had
expressed some mild surprise. "Eccentricities of genius, what? Oh yes,
he is a genius, head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd; and a
nice chap too, and abso-lutely straight. Can't help liking him. I admit
he's a bit trying at times, but it's worth it. I'd rather work with him
than with any man I know!"
Now Denis saw the position as clearly as his partner; he knew that he
could do pretty much as he liked, that Wandesforde, though he paid the
piper, would carefully refrain from calling the tune. Therefore, having
a conscience, he felt bound to do of his own accord most of the things
his partner wanted, but wouldn't ask. All which preamble leads us to
the fact that Wandesforde, not gathering from his letter that Denis
abhorred the idea of teaching Dorothea, wrote back warmly approving
of the plan. He had taken up flying in the first instance to amuse
himself; but times were hard, Dent-de-lion had been expensive, and
why shouldn't he recoup himself, as others had done, by laying out an
aerodrome and starting a flying school? The idea had been simmering in
his head for some time, and he poured it all out as soon as Denis gave
him an opening. Afterwards, when he saw how the land lay, he retracted;
but he had shown his wishes so plainly that Denis, ready to gnash his
teeth for rage, felt bound to sink his own feelings and accept Dorothea
as a pupil. In the net he had laid privily was his own foot taken.
The lessons were deferred, however, until after the Birmingham race; in
which Denis met the luck he had expected. Over the first part of the
course he made better time than any of the other competitors. Between
Polesworth and Walsall he had to come down, with valve trouble. He set
it right, and went to restart the engine by "swinging the prop," while
half-a-dozen laborers held on to the tail of the machine. Unfortunately
they were so much surprised by the sudden pull that they let go; Denis
had barely time to get out of the way of the murderous whizzing blades.
Then followed a wildly funny scene, the monoplane charging about the
field with devilish energy, while Denis and his six penitent assistants
pelted after it. In the end it butted its nose into the bank, broke the
propeller, and put itself out of the race.
"I told you what would come of flyin' on a Friday," said Denis in
self-righteous gloom to his partner, over one of those strange meals
which pilots learn to eat in village pubs. No one should fly who
isn't physically fit, so presumably their digestions are equal to
the strain. This meal had begun with beer and bacon, and gone on to
buns--three-days-old currant buns.
Wandesforde, with his wife, had been following the race in a car. His
arm was still in a sling, and his looks had not been improved by a blow
which had knocked his front teeth crooked. He was patiently mincing up
his bun with knife and fork; bite into it he could not.
"Well, dash it all, if a race is run on a Friday you have to fly it on
a Friday, don't you?" he said, annoyed. "I wouldn't have let you in if
I could possibly have held the joy-stick. I'm not superstitious about
the days of the week myself."
"No, you've had smashes on every one of the seven, haven't you?"
Bearing this with an effort, Wandesforde gave up his bun as a bad job
and consoled himself with a cigar. "I suppose now you'll go back to
Dent-de-lion and take on Miss O'Connor?" he asked, by way of changing
the subject.
"Teach her to commit suicide expensively," said the morose Denis.
"She'll never make a pilot; anybiddy can see that. Women haven't it in
them. Any old thing that's idiotic they'll do--start without fillin' up
the tank, as soon as not!"
The sting of this speech was that Wandesforde, not being always as
careful as his partner deemed desirable, had recently made this very
omission himself, and paid for it by crashing a friend's favorite bus.
The silence was broken by a small subdued sound of amusement from Mrs.
Wandesforde, which consoled her husband in proportion as it annoyed
Denis. He scowled at her through his eyeglass, and then, muttering
something about the monoplane, stalked out of the room.
"Lord!" said Wandesforde, getting up and squaring his broad shoulders
against the mantelpiece with an audible sigh of relief, "he's in a
pretty rank temper, what? I hoped he hadn't heard about Wyatt's Avro.
Never knew him so cut up about a smash before!"
His wife, a piece of silvery transparent loveliness, shook her fair
head. "Not the smash," she pronounced, oracular. "Miss O'Connor!"
Meanwhile Dorothea had established herself in a furnished cottage
at Bredon, with an old governess as companion-chaperon. Miss Byrd
had been living in an alms-house on ten shillings a week, when her
half-forgotten pupil sought her out. It should be noted in passing
that if Dorothea pursued her enemies with vengeance, she also pursued
her friends with gratitude. More than this; she could be generous
even to her enemies. Against her lawyer's advice, she had insisted on
making her uncle an allowance. "I'm not going to be a pig, because he
was!" she said. Vengeance and revenge are, in fact, very different, as
different as the lion and the hyena. But this is by the way; and indeed
at this time Dorothea's vengeance had dropped out of sight. Just as
she flung herself on Gardiner, so she had now attacked Denis, without
definite plan, on the opportunist theory that something would turn up;
and something had, but not what she expected. Her own youth lifted its
head. She had come to exploit the aeroplanes for her vengeance; and lo
and behold! she forgot her vengeance in the aeroplanes.
Denis had adapted the 1911 model for use as a school machine, and
Dorothea began in the usual way by "rolling"--i.e., taxi-ing on the
ground. Most pupils "break wood" during this process, for an aeroplane
will run any way but straight, preferring to curl round like a puppy
after its own tail. But Dorothea had by nature that automatic sixth
sense of machinery which most people acquire only by practice. She
would have learned to fly in a week, representing some three or four
hours actually in the air, if Denis had given her full time; but he
would not. Three days out of the six he kept sacred to his work. On the
remaining three Dorothea and her car appeared at Dent-de-lion whenever
the weather was favorable, and often when it wasn't. There were many
rough days that September.
At first Denis found her an unmitigated nuisance. It was bad enough to
put up with her when it was calm; but on a day of storm and tempest,
with a fifty-mile gale--then to be interrupted by rosy-hopeful youth
clamoring for a lesson--it was intolerable! Nature had never designed
Denis for a teacher. He would have crushed a stupid pupil. He was hard
even on Dorothea, when she failed to know what he hadn't told her.
But she was so eager, pliant, uncrushable, so ardently in earnest,
so reverent in attention, so insinuating in meekness: in a word, she
flattered him so sweetly that he began, unconsciously at first, yet
surely, he began to enjoy teaching her.
Even if there had been no question of Trent, Dorothea and Harry
Gardiner would never have made friends. They had nothing in common.
She, a little materialist, living in her feelings, caring not a rap
for the pleasures of the mind or fancy; he, a restless thinker,
imaginative, uneven in grain, too close in sympathy with nature to
be wholly civilized. That strain of wildness would keep him always
solitary; but Dorothea, though she had never yet had a chance to find
herself, was essentially a home woman. She wanted to adore, to be ruled
by, to mother her man in the good old-fashioned way. All that would
simply have bored Gardiner. To Denis, on the other hand, it was the
ideal of married life.
They sat side by side, his hands over hers, guiding the aeroplane, and
he forgot she was a woman. Not till then did her womanhood begin to
make its impression. She had attracted Gardiner, the man of reason,
through his senses, she attracted Denis, the man of instinct, through
his reason. He liked the quick answer of her mind to his own. Then one
day she met with an accident; her hand was grazed by the propeller. Had
it struck her full it would have shorn off her fingers in a moment,
and even as it was she was badly bruised. Denis ordered her to see a
doctor. Dorothea, pale but valiant, wanted to go on with her lesson.
"It's the first fine day we've had this week," she pleaded. "I shall
never, never fly if I stop for every miserable little trifle!"
"I shouldn't think of lettin' you," said Denis, grim and peremptory.
"You've broken one of the small bones, as likely as not."
"That I haven't!" retorted Dorothea, giving the hand a vigorous shake
to emphasize her words. Denis seized her arm.
"Do not do that! Don't you feel pain?"
"Yes, of course I do, but I can't be bothered to think about it when
I'm enjoying myself, can I?"
She stamped her foot, so absurdly enraged that Denis could not help
laughing. Her unceremonious fortitude appealed to him, just as her
pretended sensibility, when she cut her foot, had appealed to Gardiner.
Odd that in each case the quality that drew them was the precise
opposite of what each really asked for in a woman!
Dorothea had to give way; she went to a doctor, and was forbidden to
use the hand. This cut her off from her car as well as from flying, for
if she couldn't drive herself she wouldn't be driven. "Sit by and see a
hateful hired chauffeur doing my work? No, thank you!" said she. So she
sulked at Bredon, and Denis went back to his desk. He had "scrapped"
the old seaplane, lock, stock and barrel, and was working on a new
design, "a boat that would fly rather than an aeroplane that would
float," of his favorite monoplane type. Denis had long wanted to build
a monoplane which should be for the English air service what Blériots
and Moranes were for the French, or Taubes for the German; and as he
wished to show his new model at the Aero Exhibition in the spring,
he had his work cut out. The fever of invention was upon him. Yet he
missed his tiresome, charming pupil. In the brief lucid intervals when
he came to the surface, he was conscious of a vague discomfort which
neither beef nor bed availed to soothe. Her accident and the delay were
giving time for his feelings to mature. Gardiner, who was interested in
his own mental processes, would soon have found himself out; Denis, a
stranger to self-consciousness, was blind as any well-brought-up young
lady of the fifties.
Dorothea came back at last unexpectedly. After leaving his lunch to get
cold, and then bolting it in five minutes, Denis had rushed back to his
desk to finish a calculation. He was writing the last figures when a
car turned in at the gates, and he lifted his head with a frown, which
changed suddenly into a smile of pleasure. Well he knew that gay little
tune on the horn, the sound of that fresh young voice in the porch!
Down went his pen, and out he hurried to greet her, with an eagerness
which surprised himself.
"Here's your bad penny again, you see!" she cried, coming in with the
scent of the wind on her suit and the rose of it in her cheeks. "Aren't
you sick to see me? Old Turner said this morning I might use my hand,
so I came straight off. But what _have_ you been doing to yourself? You
look half starved--doesn't he, Birdie? Have you had any lunch? If you
haven't it's very wrong of you, and I shall just stand over you till
it's gone--do you hear?"
Denis, laughing, lingered to shake hands with Miss Byrd, who always
satisfied the proprieties by escorting her young friend, before
following his impetuous pupil into the parlor. Dorothea was scornfully
inspecting the remains of the meal.
"H'm! One sausage--I know it can't be more, for Rogers never gives you
more than seven, at the outside, to the pound--it's not half enough for
you. This room's hatefully uncomfortable, too," she added, frowning
round with eyes which saw it all anew. Dorothea was blind to beauty,
but wide awake to comfort, especially somebody else's comfort. "I
should like to talk to that Simpson woman. _I_'d soon make her sit up!
I think she neglects you shamefully. You're looking quite pale--isn't
he, Birdie?--and I know it's all her fault. I've no use at all for a
woman who can't keep her own people comfy!"
It was a novel experience for Denis to be scolded for neglecting
himself. "I assure you Miss Simpson's guiltless," he said, smiling.
"I've had a bit of a rush lately, that's all. I've not been able to get
out these last few days."
"Well, you're coming out with me this afternoon, or I'll know the
reason why. I can't have you looking like this," retorted Dorothea,
nodding her decision; and then, with a sudden beguiling change,
clasping both hands over his arm: "You're going to let me do straights
on my own to-day, aren't you? You almost promised you would, last time!"
Denis looked down on her hands, as though he found them a very pleasing
adornment to his sleeve. "We'll see," he said, and from that he would
not budge, for all her coaxing. He was inordinately cautious in his
tuition. They left Miss Byrd tucked up by the fire with a book, and
Denis went down to the hangars, while Dorothea got into her flying
kit. He was never tired of dinning into his pupil's ears the duty of
prudence, and certainly he set the example himself. When Dorothea
appeared at the sheds, in her tan leather coat and leggings and safety
helmet, she found her instructor tuning up the machine, and had to wait
as patiently as she might till he had done.
The morning until ten o'clock had been white and chill with one of
those luminous, snowy September fogs, which clear off into noons of
sapphire. The sky was astoundingly blue, the meadow insolently green,
the sheds all hard-edged, vivid, with keen black shadows. In the full
blaze of sunshine stood the monoplane, tall in front where the long
brown blades of the propeller cleared the ground, sloping down towards
the fin-like tail planes, and spreading its pale wings in curves not
unlike those of the gulls which sailed by, calling and fishing over the
marshes.
Dorothea climbed into her seat, Denis took his place beside her, the
men behind let go, and off they went, skimming fast and faster over
the grass, gaining speed and power for soaring. The elevator tilted,
and they parted from the earth, the moment imperceptible; only the
country, which had lain ahead, spread out suddenly below them like a
carpet. There were the green marshes, ruled out like a chess-board with
glistening waterways, and bordered with the dark blue sea: the farm,
and the sheds, and the outbuildings, all like toys made of cardboard
and glittering tin.
After circling over the aerodrome to get his height, Denis turned his
back on the coast and flew inland. As they passed, the great farm
horses plunged and fidgeted, the laborers stood still in the fields,
peering up from under their hands, the cottagers ran out into the road
to watch them overhead. Some said: "Well, I wouldn't be up in one of
them things for a thousand pounds!" and others: "Silly fools! serve 'em
right if they break their necks!" The Englishman, in fact, received
the novelty as he receives any strange thing or person, in the spirit
summed once and for all by _Punch_. Not that Denis had any right to
grumble. Except with regard to his work, he was just as conservative,
just as ready to heave his half-brick as any Bill among them.
They flew to Canterbury, and turned, banking in a steep curve, to shoot
back over the way they had come. They were five thousand feet up,
and the wind was ferocious; it seemed to press the breath back down
their throats, to wrench at the flesh on their faces. Much Dorothea
cared! On that homeward flight she was allowed, for the first time,
to guide the aeroplane herself. Denis kept his hands ready to resume
control, in case of a slip, but he was not needed; she held the pillar
till the time came to switch off the engine and glide in a long, long
slant towards the landing ground. B-rr, the motor purred again, as the
monoplane cocked up her tail, like a bird, to "flatten out" before
alighting. The landing wheels took off the shock, and they ran smoothly
over the grass till the momentum was exhausted.
Denis stayed at the hangars to see the machine housed. When he came
back to the house he found his pupil waiting for him on the steps of
the porch. She had taken off her helmet and her leather coat, and wore
the same rough tweeds in which she had wandered about the woods of the
Semois. Her skirt was short enough to show a pair of neat brown ankles,
as well as the brown shoes below them, and her hair hung down her back
in a yard and a quarter of pigtail. She said she couldn't coil it under
the helmet. Her eyes were sparkling, and her cheeks were pink, and she
propped herself against the white pillar, first on one foot, then on
the other, with the long-legged, supple awkwardness of a schoolgirl.
Strange how the years had fallen away, how little mark had been left by
her marriage, even by motherhood!
"I did it all right, didn't I?" she demanded, naïvely eager. "I didn't
make any bad breaks?"
"Not a break!" Denis assured her.
"Really? Truly? Will you let me do a figure of eight next time? I know
I could!"
"We'll see when next time comes."
Dorothea looked exceedingly naughty, like Geraldine caught stealing the
cream--the simile was Denis's own. "It's coming again to-morrow!" she
announced daringly.
Denis shook his head, smiling at her. "No, it's not."
"Ah, do let me! I've wasted so much time with the weather, and then
this hateful hand, and I do so want to learn--I _can't_ wait till
Saturday!"
"I'm sorry to disappoint such ardor, but I'm afraid you must."
"Why? You know it may change any day now into the equinoctial gales. I
think you might leave your old seaplane for once. I've never asked you
before. _Do!_"
Denis, standing below her on the path, continued to smile provokingly
and to shake his head. It amused him to see her stamp her foot, which
she did punctually, with a thunderous frown.
"I think you're _most_ unkind. It's not your duty, it's your pleasure
you're thinking of. You _like_ those miserable calculations, and that's
why you won't come. I _hate_ the seaplane!"
"There might be some point in your strictures," said Denis, teasing
her, "if I happened to be workin' at the seaplane to-morrow."
"What are you going to do, then, if not that?"
"I'm dinin' Wandesforde in town."
"O-oh," said Dorothea, undecided between storm and sunshine. "Then I
hate Mr. Wandesforde!" she concluded viciously.
"You hate so many things, don't you?"
Again she was almost ready to sulk like an offended baby; but no--out
shone the sun, and the clouds fled away. "Well, I do," she owned,
laughing back at him, "of course I do! So would anybody who wasn't a
perfect frog. It's only cold-blooded people like you and Lettice who
are tolerant. Besides, I love heaps of things to make up. I hate the
seaplane and I hate Mr. Wandesforde, but I love the monoplane and I
love you--"
It would have been nothing, nothing, if she had not pointed her words
by stopping dead and turning scarlet. Denis, puzzled, gazed at her with
his honest eyes; and then, like the falling of a curtain, saw what
her confusion meant, both to her and to himself. He stepped forward
impulsively, putting out his hands. Dorothea pressed back against the
pillar, glancing desperately from side to side; then, striking them
away, she turned and darted in at the open door, like a rabbit into its
burrow.