The strange and tremendously dramatic story of an airplane
pilot, intoxicated with the exaltation of great altitudes,
setting his course, with his sweetheart, for the stars--by the
distinguished author of “Nach Verdun” and “Out of the Night.”
It was in a bitterly pessimistic frame of mind that, having seen my
baggage into the hotel, I went for a first walk along the asphalted
esplanade of Southbeach. I had no pleasure in the baking sun, in the
glittering stretch of the English Channel that veiled itself in a
fine-weather mist all around the half-horizon. The exuberant, bold-eyed
flappers, promenading in groups of three or four, the vivid
polychromatism of their taste in sports-coats, seemed to me merely
objectionable. The hordes of worthily respectable middle-class families
complete with children--with many children--that blackened the sands
and overflowed into the fringe of the water oppressed my soul with
their formidable multiplicity.
I thought, in a savage emphasis of contrast, of the neat little yacht
that should now be bearing me across the North Sea to the austere
perfection of the Norwegian fiords. And I cursed myself for the
childish imbecility of exasperation with which--when, at the last
moment, with my suitcases all packed, I had received a telegram
informing me that the yacht had come off second-best in a collision
with a coaltramp--I had picked up Bradshaw and sworn to myself to go to
whatever place I should blindly put my finger upon as I opened the
page. The oracle had declared for Southbeach--Southbeach in mid-August!
I shrugged my shoulders--so be it! My holiday was spoiled anyhow. To
Southbeach I would go. And now, as I contemplated it, I was appalled.
What was I going to do with myself?
A paddle-wheel excursion-steamer came up to the pier, listing over with
the black load aboard of her. Up and down the beach, in five-minute
trips, a seaplane went roaring some eight hundred feet above the heads
of the gaping crowd. I had done all the flying I wanted in the war,
thank you very much. Other potentialities of amusement there were
apparently none. If I could not discover a tolerably decent
golf-course, I was a lost man.
I am not going to give the chronicle of that first day. It would be a
study in sheer boredom. That night, after one of those execrable
dinners which are the peculiar production of an English seaside hotel,
I had pretty well made up my mind that--oracle or no oracle--I would
shake the sand of Southbeach off my feet on the morrow. Sitting over my
coffee in the lounge, I was in fact already consulting the time-table
for a morning train, when my cogitations were suddenly interrupted by a
violent slap on the shoulder.
“Hello, Jimmy!”
I looked up with a start, before my identification of the voice had
time to complete itself.
“_Toby!_--Toby Selwyn--by all that’s splendid!” It was years since I
had seen him, but in this dreary desert of uninteresting people he came
like an angel of companionship, and I welcomed him with delight. “Sit
down, man. Have a drink!”
* * * * *
He did so, ordered a whisky-and-soda from the hovering waiter. I looked
at him as one looks at an acquaintance of old times, seeking for
changes. I had not seen him since the Armistice, when our squadron of
fighting scouts was demobilized and a cheery crowd of daredevil pilots
was dispersed to the four quarters of the globe.
He had not greatly altered. His face was a little thinner, more mature.
His hair was still the same wild red mop. His eyes--peculiar in that
when he opened them upon you, you saw the whites all round the
pupil--had still that strange look in them, as though somewhere deep
down in them his soul was like a caged animal, supicious and restless,
which I so well remembered. The reason for his nickname jumped back
into my mind. It was from his little trick of suddenly and
disconcertingly going “mad dog,” not only when he swooped down, against
any sort of odds, upon a covey of Huns, but in the mess. Some one had
called him “Mad dog;” it had been affectionately softened to “dog
Toby;” and “Toby” he remained.
“And what on earth are you doing here?” I asked.
He smiled grimly.
“Earning my living, old bean. Introducing all the grocers in England to
the poetry of flying, at ten bob a head.”
“So that was _your_ machine I saw going up and down the sea-front
today?”
“It was. Five-minute trips--two bob a minute, and cheap at the price.
Had to do something, you know. So I hit on this. There are worse
things. Put my last cent into buying the machine--ex-Government, of
course. She’s a topping bus!” His voice freshened suddenly with
enthusiasm. “It’s almost a shame to use her for hacking up and down
like this. You must come and have a look at her.”
“Thanks,” I replied, “I’d like to, but--”
* * * * *
Our conversation was abruptly interrupted. Toby had jumped to his feet.
Coming in through the door of the lounge was--miracles never happen
singly!--an only-too-familiar, smiling and middle-aged married couple
and--_Sylvia_! Toby obscured me from them for an instant as he went
eagerly toward them--an instant where I weighed the problem of whether
to stay or bolt. The last time Sylvia and I had met she had told me,
with a pretty sympathy that ought to have softened the blow, that she
would always be glad to have me as a _friend_, but-- The problem was
resolved for me, before I could decide. Toby was leading the trio up to
me.
“I want to introduce an old pal of mine--Jimmy Esdaile.”
Mr. and Mrs. Bryant shot a swift smile at each other and then to me as
we shook hands. Sylvia almost grinned. I felt a perfect fool. “Good
evening, Mr. Esdaile,” said Sylvia in her sweetest tones, her gray eyes
demurely alight.
_Mr._ Esdaile! The last time, it had still been “Jimmy.” It is true
that since I had somewhat boorishly informed her, upon that occasion,
that I had no manner of use for being her _friend_, I had scarcely a
legitimate grievance if now she chose to be frigid.
“Wont you sit down, all of you?” I suggested. “Mr. Bryant, you’ll take
a Grand Marnier with your coffee, I know.”
“Thanks, Jimmy, I will,” said Mr. Bryant, seating himself. I saw Toby
stare. His astonishment visibly increased as Mrs. Bryant, having
comfortably disposed herself upon the settee, added in her motherly
fashion: “And what in the world are _you_ doing here, Jimmy?”
“That’s what I’m asking myself,” I replied. Toby cut me short in what
might have been a witty answer had I been allowed to finish it.
“You people know each other, then?” he demanded.
Mr. Bryant smiled.
“Yes. We’ve met Jimmy before--haven’t we, Sylvia?”
“He used to be an acquaintance of ours in London,” corroborated Sylvia
imperturbably, delicately underlining the word acquaintance.
Toby probed me with a peculiar look, suddenly almost hostile. I could
guess that he was asking himself whether I had come to Southbeach in
pursuit of Sylvia. One did not need to be a detective to discover his
own eager interest in her. It was patent, with no attempt at
concealment. Those strange hungry restless eyes of his seemed to devour
her. Quite apart from any personal feelings--any time during the last
six months I could have assured you, with perfect sincerity, that my
heart was stone dead,--I didn’t like it. Toby was not the sort of
chap--
But I had no opportunity to intervene. Mr. and Mrs. Bryant, with a
genuine kindly interest in me and my doings that at any other time I
should have appreciated, monopolized me. And Sylvia flirted with him,
demurely but outrageously. She called him Toby with the most natural
ease in the world. He, poor devil, was awkward in an uncertainty
whether she were playing with him, jerkily spasmodic in his answers,
devouring her all the time with those strange eyes of his, wherein I
recognized that same caged-animal look familiar to me as a preliminary
to an outburst of “mad dog” on those nights when there was ragging in
the mess. She, I could see, was enjoying herself at playing with fire.
* * * * *
At last I could stand it no longer. I switched off from the amiable
platitudes I was exchanging with her parents, interrupted her in her
markedly exclusive conversation with him.
“I didn’t know Toby was a friend of yours, Syl--Miss Bryant,” I said.
She turned candid eyes upon me.
“Oh, yes, we have known Toby quite a long time--soon after you dropped
us--nearly six months, isn’t it, Toby?”
She took, evidently, a malicious pleasure in reiterating his Christian
name. I messed up the end of my cigarette before I remembered not to
chew it. Toby looked up suspiciously.
“I had no idea, either, that you were a friend of the family, Esdaile,”
he said. He also had dropped the “Jimmy.”
Sylvia answered for me.
“Not exactly a _close_ friend,” she said sweetly. “Are you, Mr.
Esdaile? We had almost forgotten each other’s existence.”