Convict B 14: A Novel

by R. K. Weekes

CHAPTER XII ALL IN THE AIR

Hark! I am called; my little spirit, see,

Sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me.

Macbeth.

Sydney Wandesforde, Denis's partner, was a big, heavy-featured, heavily built man, whose appearance nobody could have called aristocratic. Plutocratic was more like it. There had been patent pills on the distaff side of his ancestry, and unfortunately he had taken after them, instead of after the belted earls of the paternal line. He had, however, the easy manners, the clean movements, the soft voice of his class, and if he was plain he looked able.

He had never got beyond surnames with Denis; which meant that he had never met the soft side of that pugnacious Irish tongue. Denis was Haus-engel, Strassteufel, a lamb to his friends, a lion abroad. There were moments when Wandesforde thought him the most irritating man on the face of the globe; but he bore with it, never coming to a quarrel, because he liked and valued his partner too much to let him go. At the time of their first meeting, Denis had spent every penny he possessed, and had nothing to put into the partnership except his brains, and an aeroplane which at that date (1907) couldn't be induced to quit the ground. Yet the agreement was drawn as between equals, and Wandesforde claimed not more but less control than in an ordinary partnership. Why? Because he was shrewd enough to see that Denis would never work as a subordinate; and because, as aforesaid, he valued his partner too much to give him any excuse for throwing up his work and going off in a huff of outraged independence, as he would have done on the least provocation—so sensitive is an Ulsterman's pride! "Give him his head? Of course I do!" he said with half a laugh to his brother, who had expressed some mild surprise. "Eccentricities of genius, what? Oh yes, he is a genius, head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd; and a nice chap too, and abso-lutely straight. Can't help liking him. I admit he's a bit trying at times, but it's worth it. I'd rather work with him than with any man I know!"

Now Denis saw the position as clearly as his partner; he knew that he could do pretty much as he liked, that Wandesforde, though he paid the piper, would carefully refrain from calling the tune. Therefore, having a conscience, he felt bound to do of his own accord most of the things his partner wanted, but wouldn't ask. All which preamble leads us to the fact that Wandesforde, not gathering from his letter that Denis abhorred the idea of teaching Dorothea, wrote back warmly approving of the plan. He had taken up flying in the first instance to amuse himself; but times were hard, Dent-de-lion had been expensive, and why shouldn't he recoup himself, as others had done, by laying out an aerodrome and starting a flying school? The idea had been simmering in his head for some time, and he poured it all out as soon as Denis gave him an opening. Afterwards, when he saw how the land lay, he retracted; but he had shown his wishes so plainly that Denis, ready to gnash his teeth for rage, felt bound to sink his own feelings and accept Dorothea as a pupil. In the net he had laid privily was his own foot taken.

The lessons were deferred, however, until after the Birmingham race; in which Denis met the luck he had expected. Over the first part of the course he made better time than any of the other competitors. Between Polesworth and Walsall he had to come down, with valve trouble. He set it right, and went to restart the engine by "swinging the prop," while half-a-dozen laborers held on to the tail of the machine. Unfortunately they were so much surprised by the sudden pull that they let go; Denis had barely time to get out of the way of the murderous whizzing blades. Then followed a wildly funny scene, the monoplane charging about the field with devilish energy, while Denis and his six penitent assistants pelted after it. In the end it butted its nose into the bank, broke the propeller, and put itself out of the race.

"I told you what would come of flyin' on a Friday," said Denis in self-righteous gloom to his partner, over one of those strange meals which pilots learn to eat in village pubs. No one should fly who isn't physically fit, so presumably their digestions are equal to the strain. This meal had begun with beer and bacon, and gone on to buns—three-days-old currant buns.