FROM WAR TO PEACE
A heavy flying Voisin sank to the earth following the _appareil de
chasse_. The bomb-thrower hopped out and ran to Sanderson to shake
hands.
"You are a sight for sore eyes, Sandy!" he declared. "When Renaud
brought back the news of your accident and that you were fooling the
_Boches_, we voted you the palm. But _now_----"
The volatile fellow turned to make Belinda a sweeping bow.
"And your story is not unknown along this sector, Mademoiselle
Melnotte. I pray you may have a safe voyage 'over the top,' as the boys
say when they mount the trenches for a bayonet charge."
"Ah, Renaud! The top of the morning to you! Now, let's aboard. We'll
have a gang of _Boches_ down upon us if we don't."
He ran to take the extra seat upon the Nieuport, waving his hand
cheerfully. His spirit of reckless courage seemed to inspire them all.
Sanderson helped Belinda to mount into the Voisin, which was able to
carry their weight besides that of the pilot and the machine gun.
Renaud remained behind as the aeroplanes ascended, one after the other.
He still had work to do within the enemy's lines. In the gray dawn he
stood, a dim figure in the clearing as the airplanes spiraled upward.
Yet somehow he seemed a dominating figure, too. It is by the work of
such men as well as the bravery of the aviator-observers that the
Allies are to conquer in this war.
The squadron of French airplanes had now drifted over the battleline
while up from the German camps had sprung _tauben_ and Fokkers in swift
pursuit.
The Voisin and its accompanying Nieuport rose higher in an attempt
to escape the observation of these enemy craft. Both Sanderson and
Belinda, unprepared for the aerial journey, soon began to suffer from
the cold.
Renaud had, in the end, forced his farmer's smock upon the girl. She
cowered under this, her teeth chattering, her extremities fast becoming
numb. The pilot saw their suffering and made himself heard above the
noise of the motor.
"Which shall it be, Monsieur and Mademoiselle? Frost or bullets?"
"It is a slim choice," groaned Sanderson. "But we _may_ escape shrapnel
and mitrailleuse pellets. The cold takes her breath, Monsieur. I beg of
you, descend!"
The great machine volplaned. It moved so slowly compared with the
Nieuport, that the latter craft winged circles about the Voisin, ready
to stave off attack.
They had, however, been discovered. Had not a fleet of battleplanes
risen to meet the Germans from behind the French lines, the two tardy
flying machines must have been swooped upon by a whole army of _Boches_.
As it was, three of the enemy machines attacked the Voisin and
accompanying Nieuport.
Sanderson left Belinda strapped to her seat and did good service with
the machine gun. He almost immediately got one of the three enemy
airplanes and the girl saw the aviator and his machine--the latter on
fire--go spinning down the airways to a dreadful fall.
She was in the midst of battle and sudden, awful death. This was far
worse than anything she had dreamed of in all her field hospital
experience.
The thundering of the trench cannon, the bursting of shells, the
results of the earth conflict, were dwarfed by what she now saw.
Men fighting, almost hand to hand, in the unstable air! It was the
conflict of a nightmare--not reality! The Red Cross nurse, used as she
had become to the horrors of warfare, had never seen anything like this.
The roaring of the motor drowned most other sounds. Yet there was
an insistent whining in her ears that could not be the wind singing
through the wires of the airplane.
A cable snapped, coiling in an ever-agitated, vibrating spiral. That
was no mere incident of flying! She saw the pilot's cap suddenly torn
open. A gory smear appeared along the side of his head above his
exposed ear!
The bullets were flying like gnats about them.
She beheld Sanderson, working madly the crank of the machine gun,
suddenly sway backward and clap his uninjured hand to his wounded
shoulder.
Belinda shrieked: "You are hit! Frank, they have shot you!" and she
flung herself along the seat to his side.
His lips moved:
"They've got me again, girl. But don't be alarmed. I could put that
fellow out of business with a few more shots."
She sensed his meaning, if she did not hear all he said. The large
enemy airplane was hovering overhead. Sanderson had aimed the gun at
the tail of the German craft.
Belinda seized the crank. Somehow she managed to throw in the clutch
and immediately began turning the crank steadily. She was cool despite
the roar and rattle of the spiteful gun.
"There! There!" shouted Sanderson. "Brave girl! _We've got him!_"
The enemy airplane "went off on the wing." As it passed the Voisin the
German pilot turned his pistol upon the three in the French machine.
Fearfully Frank turned to the girl as her head sank upon his shoulder.
Through the sleeve of the smock she wore he saw the spreading crimson
stain.
"Belinda! You are wounded!"
She sighed. Her eyes opened drowsily. He saw her lips move and read the
words they formed:
"I--love--you. Whatever comes, we have--each--other, dear."
He held her tightly, forgetting the sharp pain of his own wound. The
crippled Voisin drifted over the battleline and the pilot finally made
a safe landing within French territory.
* * * * *
"By Hannah!" exploded Captain Raphael Dexter. "We'll do it
to-morrow--at the American embassy--the two couples of us! I'll stand
up with you, Frank, and you can stand up with me."
This was some days after the shipmaster had found the wounded couple
and had moved heaven and earth to bring them back to Paris on the
nearest thing to a special train that money and influence could buy in
the French Republic.
Captain Raphael Dexter had just come back to the hotel to Sanderson
from one of his frequent calls at the furnished apartment on the Rue
di Rivoli, where Miss Roberta Melnotte reigned supreme. For Belinda
was resting and recuperating and the small maid had little to do but
watch "Mam'selle" do the work.
"She's a mighty tidy craft," Captain Dexter pursued, in the honesty of
his heart. "And no Quaker, by Hannah! She just fizzes when she gets on
the subject of these Germans. I declare I do like a woman with spunk in
her.
"It's hard lines when a man has to go outside his own family and home
for excitement. I've always, Frank, been hampered by milk-and-watery
womenfolk. My wife and my darters--Prudence, Patience and
Penelope--never had enough life in 'em to keep a man awake.
"Now," went on the shipmaster, "if a man had such a wife as this here
Mam'selle Roberta would make, by Hannah! he wouldn't have to hunt
distraction all over the earth--not by a jugful!"
"If Mademoiselle Roberta and Belinda agree," said the aviator, "I don't
see why we can't do as you say, Skipper."
The old fellow grinned at him like a boy.
"That girl Belinda," he said, "would marry you in her cap and apron if
you said the word. By Hannah! boy, you don't realize yet what sort of a
woman you've got in her."
"Oh, _don't_ I?" the young man returned. "Don't you fool yourself,
Captain."
Captain Dexter's plan was carried out. The embassy was American soil.
They needed no special marriage license.
Even Aunt Roberta did not demand conformance with French custom. To
tell the truth, since Belinda and Frank had decided, because of their
wounds, to spend the furloughs granted them in New York, Aunt Roberta
had been only too anxious to depart from that "so-dear Paris." She did
not talk of it much, but after ten years in America, Paris had been a
distinct disappointment to the taut little Frenchwoman.
"Besides," she confessed to her niece, "I am anxious to see that dear
Old Saybrook--a spot _très charmant_, I am sure. _Ma foi, oui!_ _Le
capitaine_ wrote long ago to his three daughters, Mesdames Prudence,
Patience and Penelope, to tell them he would marry me. Though for my
part I do not see how he could know _that_, when at the time he had not
yet asked me," she added innocently. "But _le Capitaine_ Dexter is so
masterful.
"And so the Mesdames Prudence, Patience and Penelope have all written
to me asking me to visit them. _Ma foi!_ In marrying _le capitaine_ I
marry a family, do I not?"
To Belinda Frank said:
"I presume my brother Jim will rake me over the coals for enticing you
into matrimony. To be an airman's wife----"
"But you fly for our country, Frank--for America! She needs you, as she
needs me. We Americans have entered this war with noble intent. As our
forefathers fought for freedom and democracy for us in seventy-six, so
we must now fight for the same good gifts for all the world."
"I believe you _are_ an American, Belinda--the best of us all!" Frank
rejoined, gazing upon her earnest face tenderly.
THE END