THE “FLYING CORNTASSEL”
The evening after her arrival in Salt Lake City, Rosemary Sample, the
young airplane stewardess, overheard a conversation that interested her
greatly and at the same time strengthened her faith in the rather
mysterious young man, Danby Force.
She might have thought of herself as an eavesdropper had not the
incident occurred in that most public of all public places, the lobby of
a large hotel, the Hotel Temple Square. Not that she was staying at so
expensive a place. Far from that, she occupied a room in a clean,
modest-priced rooming house. But Rosemary had a weakness for large downy
chairs, soft lights, expensive draperies and all that and, since at this
time of year this hotel was not crowded, she could see no reason why she
might not indulge these tastes for an hour or two at least.
She was buried deep in a heavily upholstered chair, thinking dreamily of
her home in Kansas, of her mother, father, and the young people of the
old crowd back home. She was smiling at the name they had given her,
“The Flying Corntassel of Kansas,” when, chancing to look up, she beheld
a vision of beauty all wrapped in deep purple and white. To her
astonishment she realized that this was none other than the flying
gypsy’s adopted daughter who called herself Petite Jeanne. She wore a
long cape of purple cloth trimmed with white fox fur.
At the same moment someone else caught the vision, Danby Force. And
Danby Force had something to say about it.
“What a gorgeous cape, and what marvelous color!” he exclaimed. There
was in his tone not a trace of flattery. He spoke with the sincerity of
one who really knows beauty of texture when he sees it.
“Yes,” the little French girl agreed, “it is very beautiful. It was sent
to me only last month by my gypsy friends in France. Since I have had a
little money I have helped them at times. Their life is hard. These days
are very hard.
“The cloth,” she went on after a time, “was woven by hand from pure
sheep’s wool taken from the high French Alps.”
“And the color?” Danby Force asked eagerly.
“Ah-h—” the little French girl smiled. “That is a deep secret that only
the gypsies know. There are those who say the kettle of color only boils
at midnight and that then the color is mixed with blood. That is
nonsense. These are good gypsies, Christian gypsies, just as the great
preacher, Gypsy Smith was. But they have their secrets and they keep
them well.
“Perhaps,” she added after a moment’s thought, “this is the royal purple
one reads of in the Bible. Who can tell?”
“That,” said Danby Force, “is a valuable secret.” He motioned the little
French girl to a seat and took one close beside her.
“I know a man,” he said after a moment of silence, “who made some
valuable discoveries regarding colors. He could dye cloth in such a
manner that it would not fade, yet the process was not costly.
“This man had spent his boyhood in a town where textile mills had
flourished. After his remarkable secret discoveries he returned to that
town to find the people idle, the mills falling into decay. The weaving
industry had moved south where there was cotton and cheap
labor—pitifully cheap!”
Danby Force paused to stare at the pattern of the thick carpet on the
floor. He appeared to be making a mental comparison between that carpet
and the cheap rag rugs on the floors in that forgotten town.
Rosemary stole a look at the little French girl’s face. It was all
compassion.
“And this little forgotten town?” suggested Petite Jeanne at last.
“It is forgotten no longer.” Danby Force smiled a rare smile. “The man
who possessed those rare secrets of color gave them to his home town.
Since they were able to produce cloth that was cheap, and better than
any other of its kind, the mills began to flourish again and the people
to work and smile.
“But now,” he added as a shadow passed over his interesting face, “their
prosperity is threatened once more.”
Then, as if he had been about to divulge a forbidden secret, he sprang
to his feet. “I must be going. We leave at eight. That right?”
“It is quite right,” agreed Petite Jeanne.
Rosemary Sample went to her rest that night with a strange sense of
futile longing gnawing at her heart. What was its cause? She could not
tell. Had she become truly interested in that strange young man, Danby
Force, who talked so beautifully of God’s unseen power, who spoke of
doing good to thousands, and yet who might have—. She would not say it
even to herself, yet she could not avoid thinking. Could she become
seriously interested in such a young man? She could not be sure.
“That charming little French girl is carrying him away in the morning,”
she assured herself. “I may never see him again.
“He is going back to the hunting lodge. I wonder—”
She tried to picture in her mind the bit of life’s drama that would be
enacted by Danby Force and the little French girl after they had landed
and gone down the narrow trail to the lodge. In the midst of this rather
vain imagining she fell asleep.
She awoke next morning prepared for one more journey through the air,
one more group of passengers. “Wonder if there will be any interesting
ones?” she whispered. “Wonder if that dark-faced woman will return with
me?” She shuddered. “She’s like a raven, Poe’s raven. Wonder if she’s
filed a complaint about her missing bag. And if she has, what will come
of it?”
After oatmeal, coffee and rolls eaten at a counter with the capable and
ever friendly Mark Morris at her side, she felt well fortified for the
day’s adventures, come what might.
We advertise our occupation in life by the posture we assume. The barber
has his way of standing that marks him as a barber. The clerk of a
department store puts on a mask in the morning and takes it off at
night. The posture of an airplane stewardess is one suggesting the
jaunty joy of life pictured by a blue bird on the tiptop of a tree,
seventy feet in air.
“Safe?” her posture says plainer than words. “Of course it’s safe to
fly. Look at me, I’ve flown four hundred thousand miles.”
Rosemary Sample was an airplane stewardess to the very tips of her
fingers. Her task was a dual one, to inspire confidence and to
entertain. She did both extremely well. Yet she too must be entertained.
She must receive a thrill now and again. Riding in a plane brought no
thrill to her. Only her passengers could bring her the change she
craved.
“There’s always one,” she had a way of saying to her friends, “one
passenger who is worth five hours of study.”
She was not long in finding the “one” on this journey back to Chicago.
Strangely enough, he took the seat vacated by the dark-complexioned
lady. Yet, how different he was! He was young, not much over twenty,
Rosemary thought.
“Hello, little girl!” were his first words. “What’s your name?”
“Rosemary Sample.” She smiled because she was saying to herself, “He’ll
do the talking. That’s fine. I’m too tired to talk.”
“So you’re a sample.” He laughed. “I’d like a dollar bottle of the
same.”
“A sample’s all there is and all there can be,” she replied quickly.
“What! You mean to say you couldn’t grow?”
“Exactly. Five feet four inches tall, weight a hundred and twenty
pounds. Those are the regulations for a stewardess. You can be smaller,
but no larger. You see,” she laughed, “they couldn’t make the airplane
cabins to fit the stewardesses, tall, short, thin or thick, so the
stewardess must be picked to fit the cabin.”
“Oh!” The young man’s grin was frank, honest and friendly. “Well, this
is my first trip in these big birds. I’ve got a little ship all my own,
only just now she’s busted up quite a bit.”
“Cracked up? Too bad!” Rosemary was truly sorry. She was going to like
this passenger. Besides, to one who sails the air a crack-up is just as
true an occasion for sorrow as a shipwreck is to a mariner on the high
seas. “What happened?” she asked quietly. “Bad storm?”
“No.” He laughed lightly. “Couple of struts got loose. I nearly lost
control two thousand feet up. Cracked up in a corn field. Shucked a lot
of corn.” He laughed rather loudly.
Rosemary’s face was sober. She had seen his kind before. They went in
for flying because it promised thrills. They neglected their planes. If
they crashed and were not killed, they turned it into a joke. The whole
thing made her feel sick inside. She loved flying. She thought of it as
one of God’s latest and most marvelous gifts to man. She knew too that
nothing very short of perfection in care, equipment and piloting could
put it in the place in every man’s life where it belonged.
“So you laugh at a crash that results from carelessness?” Her lips were
white. “That’s the sort of thing that makes life hard for all of us who
are trying to make flying seem a safe and wonderful thing. Nothing but
selfishness could make one laugh at a tragedy or a near tragedy that is
his own fault. It—”
But she stopped herself. After all, she was a stewardess, being paid to
be pleasant.
Springing to her feet, she moved up the aisle to see that the airplane
load of traveling salesmen forward had the papers, pencils, magazines
and pillows they needed.
“So you’re a sample,” said the youth as she returned to her seat. “Don’t
know as I want a full bottle after all.”
“In the end you’ll take it.” She was smiling now. “Or someone will be
setting up a marble marker where little Willie lies. And that,” she
added slowly, “would be too bad.”
She spoke, not of herself, but her attitude toward aviation. He knew
this. She could read it in his eyes.
“Tha—thanks for these few kind words,” he replied rather lamely.
Five minutes later this young man, who went by the name of William
VanGeldt and whose family evidently were possessed of considerable
wealth, was speaking in glowing tones of his mother. He had, the young
stewardess discovered, beneath his thin coating of indifference to the
serious things of life, a warm heart full of appreciation for the ones
who had given of their best that his life might be well worth living.
“He’ll take the full bottle,” she whispered to herself. “And he’ll get
to like it.” She was to learn the truth of these words in days that were
to come.