The cost of wings, and other stories

THE COST OF WINGS AND OTHER STORIES
BY RICHARD DEHAN AUTHOR OF “ONE BRAVER THING,� “BETWEEN TWO THIEVES,� ETC.
NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1914, by Frederick A. Stokes Company All rights reserved
SHELDRICK, returning, refreshed and exhilarated, from a spin with a friend who had brought down a racing car of forty horse-power and an enthusiasm to match, found his wife sitting in the same chair, in the same attitude, as it seemed to him, in which he had left her, in the bare, dull sitting-room of their quarters at the Pavilion Hotel, on the edge of Greymouth Links, from which starting point Sheldrick, in fulfillment of his recent engagement with the Aero Club of France, had arranged to take wing for Cherbourg, wind and weather permitting, on the morrow.
It would be difficult exceedingly to imagine Caruso as an engineer or a bank manager, or in any capacity other than that of operatic star. It would be equally difficult to picture Shackleton as a side-splitting antic and quip-monger, or Pélissier in the rôle of the dauntless explorer. Sheldrick, the most recent idol of the flying world, was the type-ideal of the aviator.
Mathematician, engineer, meteorologist, and athlete, his tall, lightly built but muscular frame carried the head of an eagle. The wide forehead, sloping to the temples, the piercing prominently set eyes, the salient nose, and the wide, firm, deep-cut mouth characterizing the long-winged birds of powerful flight, were Sheldrick’s. His, too, the long, supple neck, the curiously deceptive shoulder slope that disguises depth of chest while his long arms looked as though, were they clothed with feathers, they might cleave the air; and his feet gripped the ground through the thin, soft boots he always wore, as the eagle’s talons grip the rock.
Perhaps he was not unaware of the suggested resemblance. He had certainly christened his recently completed monoplane “Aquila,� and had piloted her to victory in two minor events at the Moncaster Spring Flying Meeting in April of that year, and at the Nismes Concours des Aviateurs of three weeks before had carried off the Grand Prix of 25,000 francs for the longest flight under favorable weather conditions. And at the Club dinner following the presentation of the prizes, Sheldrick, flushed with conquest and congratulations, had given that pledge whereby the soul of the woman who yet loved him was wrung to torture anew.