Chapter III

It is told of Billy Cobb that he never had to woo the air.

The first instructor to take him up reported back to the pilotage office an hour later in a semihysterical condition.

“Say,” he demanded of the senior instructor who had assigned him to introduce Cadet Cobb to the opening chapter of the flying primer, “what’re you trying to do--kid me?”

“Kid you! How come?”

“This What’s-his-name cadet--this Cobb! If he’s a cadet I’m an ostrich!”

“What’s the trouble with Cobb?”

“Trouble with Cobb? Trouble with me, you mean! He’s been showing me how to fly for the last half hour. Come out to the line. You’ve got to see this!”

Of course it was weeks before Billy was officially turned loose and rated for his wings. The office of the D. M. A. is a stickler for preservation of the forms and appearances. But actually the marvel spread through hangar, shop, and barrack that day. Cobb was “over the hump!”

It was the first day, mind you, he had ever warped a wing or kicked a rudder bar. He had laid his hand on the airplane and the airplane in that instant had become his to do with as he willed. And this was so, of course, precisely because some occult well of sympathy within him taught the man exactly what he must will to do--and what must not be willed.

There was that same sympathy in him where Jennie was concerned. And he won her, as he won the air, instantly--without wooing. His spirit laid its spell upon her heart just as his hand had set its cunning on the airplane. The air and Jennie. Both became his in the hour of meeting. He was not then aware of it but when Jennie Brent had slipped the strap through the buckle of his helmet at that first encounter she already belonged to him. The gesture was the first signal between them of dedication on her part and consecration on his. Once again Bill Cobb was “over the hump.”

In all their brief life together the analogy between Jennie and the air with respect to Billy Cobb holds true. Thus, it was nothing but the idle matter of appearances that kept Cobb waiting those weeks succeeding his conquest of the airplane before his pilot’s rating was bestowed. And it was the same matter of appearances that withheld for a space the open avowal of Jennie’s surrender. A woman has need to be at least as jealous of the forms as the D. M. A.

Eight weeks to a day after Billy’s first encounter with the air--in ’seventeen things happened faster in the service than they do now--his rating had come through. Was it blind coincidence, or was it a cunningly fitted fragment in that symbolic mosaic of analogy which made their relationship so remarkable, that Jennie’s overt surrender should likewise have chanced exactly eight weeks after their first meeting?

June was passing in the farewell blaze of an incomparable sunset. A little wind wandered curiously into the airdrome bringing a breath of grassy freshness from the tablelands beyond the coastal hills to mingle with the acrid bouquet of fresh-burned castor oil and gas. It rippled the canvas curtains of the Bessoneau hangars where they stood in a massive row, shoulder to shoulder, silent, placid, like elephants chained and sleeping, long shadows stretched behind them. It quivered the flaccid form of the landing sock, hanging nerveless against its staff by the door of the pilotage hut at the end of the hangar line. But most of all it stirred the heart of Jennie, standing near an open Bessoneau, peering steadfastly into the gold and glory of the west, and waiting. For at the same time that it kissed and cooled her cheek it murmured in her ear a faintly intoned chantey--the song of a distant homing motor.

Billy was coming at last! He was an hour overdue, the longest hour Jennie could recall. But it was all right now. She could hear the singsong shouting of the full-out engine clearly.

“Billy is coming!” That was the burden of the engine’s song that reached her down the wind. Jennie marveled at the sweetness of that music.

Her eyes confirmed the message of the wind. High above the purple summit of a rose-framed thunder head she made him out, a buoyant purple speck in a dazzling flood of wine-clear gold. She watched the speck until it grew to a flake, the flake until it became an airplane, the airplane until it roared above her head, crossed to the downwind limit of the field, spun about with a flash of upflung wing and flirting tail, and shot for the landing with a sudden hushing of the deep-voiced engine.

The silver ship rolled up with friendly little snorts and chuckles and stopped beside her. Billy took her upstretched hand and jumped down. They left the plane to Hansen and his crew and walked away together in the twilight down the row of brooding hangars.

“Oh,” Jennie sighed happily, “I am glad, Billy!”

“Glad? Why, particularly, Jennie?”

“I--I don’t know. How was the ship today?”

“Better than ever, Jennie.”

He paused, hesitating to voice the thought that followed, groping, too, for words to give it form. Then:

“Do you know,” he said, “there’s something about that ship and you, Jennie, that---- Well, what I mean is that when I am with that ship and when I am with you I sort of feel--the same way. Kind of comfortable and--and, well, happy, Jennie. Do you know what I mean?”

He felt her sway toward him. He felt her hand on his arm.

“Perhaps”--she answered, a little breathlessly, “perhaps I do, Billy--tonight!”

“Why ‘tonight,’ Jennie?”

“Because--because----”

They walked on with no more speech until they reached the pilotage hut beyond the hangars. It was dim and silent. They sat down, side by side, on the low step before the door. Excepting where Hansen and his crew were tucking the silver ship to bed by the flitting light of a trouble-shooter’s lamp, two hundred yards away, no life appeared anywhere on the glooming expanse of the quiet field.

“Jennie,” said Billy Cobb, “I know why that little ship reminds me of you.”

“Why, Billy?”

“Because I love it, too.”

There was just enough of the blue-gray twilight left for Billy to see the widening of her eyes at that and the accentuation of the wistful curve at either corner of her mouth.

She sat considering his face intently. Then she turned away, leaned a little forward, clasped her hands about her knees, and stared off at something he could not see--something in the remote distance, beyond the faintly outlined crests of the western hills.

“You are sure,” she asked at length, very softly, “that it is true--what you have said about the ship and me, Billy?”

“I am sure,” he said. “It is true now, it will always be true, Jennie--till--till the last crash.”

He thought she shuddered just a little. Then:

“Why do you always say that--that--about the last crash, Billy?”

“Why--why, I don’t know. Just a habit--means something a long ways off, I guess.”

“Oh!” said Jennie, a faint tremor in her voice. “I--I hope so, Billy.”

“Why, Jennie----”

“Nothing, Billy--nothing at all. A foolish idea. It’s gone.”

She paused, looked away, then turned her face to his again.

“And just what,” she questioned, a little timidly, a little eagerly, “did you mean, Billy, about--about the ship--and--and me?”

Billy Cobb drew a deep breath.

“I will show you--dear,” he said.

At ten o’clock a single figure moved through the moon-cast shadow of the pilotage hut. At the edge of the shadow the figure paused. There was a little noise--such a noise as tokens the parting of close-pressed lips. The single figure became twain. Billy Cobb and Jennie Brent emerged reluctantly into the argent flood that bathed the airdrome and passed again along the row of canvas stables where the airplanes slept, under the silver benediction of the moon.