Convict B 14: A Novel

by R. K. Weekes

In telling her tale to Lettice, Dorothea had said less than the truth. For one thing, she was ashamed to own that she had been physically afraid of her uncle. The anger of a stupid and wrong-headed man may be a very brutal thing. When he threatened to knock her down, Dorothea gave in, in helpless rage and humiliation, bad companions for a high-spirited girl. Also she suffered more than she herself realized from her isolation. Dorothea was the born devotee; she would never have learned to hate if she had had any one to adore. But she was quite alone. The neighborhood was up in arms, no doubt, but nobody was anxious to stand forth as her champion: partly because people are always loath to interfere in a neighbor's business, partly because the unlucky little heiress had been painted by her loving relatives in such very lurid colors that some of the paint had stuck.

Then came Major Trent to stay at the Anglers' Rest. He met Dorothea one morning when she had been sent out to exercise her aunt's Chow. The amiable Xit tried to bite the stranger, and did bite Dorothea when she hauled him off. Naturally Trent expressed his concern. Naturally Dorothea did not mention the incident at home. They met again next day, of course by chance, in the same place—in fine, Dorothea had found her champion. The affair was rushed through in a month. Mrs. O'Connor woke up one morning to miss her early cup of tea. She descended in a dressing-gown to scold Dorothea, but no Dorothea was to be found. She had gone, without leaving so much as the traditional note on her pin-cushion. Next day came the announcement of her marriage, by special license, to Major Trent, D.S.O.

Dorothea when she married was innocent and ignorant as a child. She came to Trent with eager fresh gratitude and affection. She spent eight months with him; eight feverish, hothouse-forcing months of premature emotion. Towards the end of the time, when his passion had cooled, and when she herself was calmed and steadied by the hope of motherhood, she began to look at her battered knight with wondering eyes, which would soon have grown critical. His tragic death, however, made criticism disloyal, and invested Trent with all his former glories. It swept away, too, the hope to which the girl had been looking forward with grave, ennobling joy. Only Louisa knew how frantically Dorothea grieved for her baby. Her long illness was really an obstinate refusal to be comforted. Louisa, it may be noted, had not been Dorothea's devoted nurse. She had been Mr. O'Connor's incomparable cook; and the unkindest blow his niece dealt was that she carried off, when she went, the only perfect maker of soufflés he had ever known.

Here was Dorothea, then, at twenty-one, half a child and half a woman, frantic with grief, and convinced that the murderer of her husband and child was going free unpunished. She vowed herself to vengeance as a sacred duty. She was unpersuadably sure that all she had done to Gardiner was justifiable. But Denis was different. True, he had screened the murderer, but Dorothea couldn't but own that in his shoes she would have done the same. She was not quite happy in her mind; but she crushed the scruple, telling herself that when justice is done the innocent must suffer with the guilty. She crushed it, and presently she forgot it, yes, and her vengeance into the bargain, when they went out to see the works. Aeroplanes are so exciting! After all, Dorothea was not much more than a baby, and she had long arrears of play to make up.

In old days, Denis and his man Simpson had built the machines with their own hands; later, at Bredon, they employed half-a-dozen men; now there were twenty, and the number was growing. Behind the tall palisade a nest of sheds was springing up—wood and metal working shops, rigging rooms, offices, stores, Simpson's cabin where he slept as night watchman, and finally the hangars. Great ugly erections of brickwork and corrugated iron, with gable ends and sliding doors, they caught the eye at once. The first held an unfinished seaplane, marked for rebuilding after undergoing her trials; a biplane built in 1911, now hopelessly out of date; and a Blériot monoplane belonging to Wandesforde which Denis hated, and which, he gravely assured his companion, would kill him if he gave it the chance. But he hurried Dorothea past these to the smaller shed, which contained only one machine: his favorite, his beloved, the 80 h.p. monoplane scout which had been entered for the Birmingham race.

She was very small, scarcely larger than Santos-Dumont's famous "Demoiselle." There was a slender bird-like body, the fuselage, in which the pilot sat, deep-sunk, with passenger behind, engine and propeller in front, the two long blades standing out like antennæ. Pale wings arched and tilted upwards on either side, curving like the wings of a gull in flight. The whole stood on a light framework, the chassis or under-carriage, corresponding to the feet of a bird. Dorothea listened, while Denis explained the perfections of his handiwork. Tangential, lift coefficient, angle of incidence, such terms went in at one ear and out at the other; she was not interested in scientific aeronautics. Denis was expounding the principles of stream-line design, as shown in the curves of his fuselage, when she interrupted.

"Mr. Merion-Smith, will you teach me to fly?"

"Will I teach you to fly?"

"Yes. You said I could learn. I want to learn."